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EIGHTH     NOTES 

VOICES   AND    FIGURES  OF 
MUSIC    AND    THE    DANCE 


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EIGHTH  NOTES 

VOICES  AND  FIGURES  OF 
MUSIC  AND  THE  DANCE 


BT 
H.  T.  PARKER 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANYj 

1922 


Copyright,  1923, 
By  DODD,  mead  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


Pitted  m  the  U.  8.  A. 


.»»  •     • 


MUSIC 
LIBRARY 

HLCO 


o 

S  To 

««>  G.  S.  M. 

tg  WHO    GAVE    ME    OPPORTUNITy 
2  AND    FREEDOM 


351545 


EXPLANATION  AND  ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

THIS  book  is  of  purpose  fragmentary.  It 
does  not  contain  comprehensive  and 
searching  "critical  studies,"  but  the  im- 
pressions received  and  recorded  by  a  reviewer  for 
a  newspaper  in  the  daily  round  of  concert-hall, 
opera  house  and  "copy."  At  the  passing  hour  in 
which  they  were  written,  at  the  passing  moment  in 
which  they  may  engage  the  reader,  enough  if  they 
capture  a  sensation,  decant  a  mood,  reflect  a  trait, 
recall  achievement,  isolate  an  individualizing 
quality,  hazard  an  opinion  or,  best  of  all,  from 
the  tinder  of  words  rekindle  the  sparks  of  pleasure 
remembered.  For  to  give  pleasure  in  kind  and 
degree  is  essential  obligation  upon  those  who  are 
voice  to  music  or  body  to  the  dance;  while  it  is 
incumbent  duty  upon  the  reviewer  to  discern  and 
define  (so  far  as  he  may)  that  pleasure. 

Outside  occasional  pages,  too  few  to  need  speci- 
fication, these  memoranda  of  the  moment  were 
originally  strewn  through  the  columns  of  the 
Boston  Evening  Transcript.    From  it,  with  the  per- 

vii 


V 


viii  ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

mission  of  the  proprietors,  they  have  been  astutely 
assembled  and  ingeniously  coordinated  by  my 
friend,  Neil  Martin.  Without  his  insistence,  this 
book  would  never  have  been  undertaken;  without 
his  persistence,  it  would  never  have  been  accom- 
plished. For  such  offices  of  friendship  a  prefatory 
note  is  polite,  prescribed  and  petty  return. 

H.   T.   p. 

Randolph, 

New  Hampshire, 
June,  1922. 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 
CHAPTK8  -1 

I    Conductors • 

Toscanini,  Muck,  Mengelberg,  Monteux, 
Stock,  Stokowski,  Stransky. 

II  Singing-Actors • 

Garden,  Farrar,  Jeritza,  Renaud,  Chalia- 
pin,  Caruso,  Fremstadt,  Tetrazzini,  Galli- 
Curci,  Ruffo. 

77 

III  Singers  of  Songs •    ,   '  • 

McCormack,  Rosing,  Culp,  Gerhardt, 
Hempel,  Destinn,  Teyte,  Gauthier,  Schu- 
mann-Heink. 

109 

IV  Pianists ^^ 

Paderewski,  Gabrilowitsch,  Bauer,  Rakh- 
maninov,  Hofmann,  Busoni,  Moiseiwitsch, 

Novaes. 

V    Violinists ^^^ 

Auer,  Kreisler,  Heifetz,  Zimbalist,  Spald- 
ing, Thibaud,  Elman,  Ysaye,  Casals. 

VI    Chamber-Music    ....••?•    '•     ^'^^ 
The  Flonzaleys,  The  Londoners. 

VII     A  DiSEUSE  ....      .      .      •     r.^    '•      •     1^^ 

Yvette  Guilbert. 

VIII    Dancers     ......••••     ^^^ 

The  Russian  Ballet,  Pavlowa,  Nijinsky, 
Genee,  Isadora  Duncan. 


I 

CONDUCTORS 


EIGHTH  NOTES 


I.  ToscANiNi's  Fires 

TEUTONIC  tradition  has  died  hard  in 
music  in  America.  Once  it  was  prepon- 
derant, and  it  was  a  primary  article  of 
tonal  faith  that  the  best  music  was  made  only  in 
German-speaking  lands  and  that  the  best  inter- 
preters of  it  came  also  from  them.  The  Russians 
smote  the  tradition  with  the  hard  blows  of  their 
symphonies;  the  new  Frenchmen  pricked  it  with 
the  sharp  thrusts  of  their  impressions  and  images; 
the  Italians  seared  it  with  the  hot  fires  of  their 
newer  work.  And  every  year  and  almost  every 
week  the  hearers  of  music  in  America,  whatever 
its  "school,"  were  becoming  a  more  cosmopolitan 
public.  The  tradition  that  music  is  a  German  art — 
or  manufacture — is  dead.  It  is  dead,  too,  with 
singers  and  virtuosi  of  the  piano  and  violin.  They 
come  to  America  and  usually  receive  their  deserts, 
whether  Germany  happened  or  not  to  nurture  them 

[1] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

and  whether  Berlin  or  Munich  or  Leipzig  or  Vienna 
has  approved  or  disapproved  them.  And  this  was 
true,  too,  for  nearly  a  decade  before  the  war 
alienated  Germany  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 
With  conductors,  the  German  tradition  lingered 
longer  and  with  more  reason.  In  German-speak- 
ing opera  houses  and  concert  halls  conductors  were 
better  trained,  exercised  more  authority,  excited 
more  public  interest,  received  more  public  esteem 
than  they  did  elsewhere. 

To  Germany,  accordingly,  the  founders  of  sym- 
phony orchestras  in  America  went  for  their  con- 
ductors and  from  Germany  came  usually  the  con- 
ductors who  were  charged  with  Wagner's  music- 
dramas  and  other  "serious"  work  in  American 
opera  houses.  An  Italian  might  do  very  well  with 
the  operas  of  his  own  country;  a  French  conductor 
might  at  least  have  his  routine  uses;  but  for  "real" 
conducting  in  the  "high"  sense  of  the  word  there 
could  be  only  a  German.  This  last  remnant  of  the 
Teutonic  tradition  endured  long  in  our  opera 
houses  and  concert  halls.  Then  it  became  limp, 
faded,  threadbare.  For  there  came  fifteen  years 
or  more  ago  to  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  in 
New  York  a  conductor  of  the  first  rank,  known  to 
many   another   city   besides,   an   Italian,   Arturo 

[2] 


CONDUCTORS 

Toscanini.  For  five  years  he  did  much  of  the 
"serious  work"  of  the  opera  house;  for  five  years 
he  led  impressively  in  one  and  another  of  Wagner's 
music-dramas — a  grievous  blow  to  the  tradition; 
and  then,  at  last,  for  final  thrust  into  its  very 
bowels,  he  proved  little  less  impressive  in  sym- 
phonic music  when  he  undertook  a  concert  now  and 
then  as  conductor  of  the  Metropolitan  orchestra. 

When  Mr.  Toscanini  came  first  to  the  Metropoli- 
tan, the  wiseacres  wagged  their  heads  ominously, 
and  those  who  were  prone  to  mistake  Teutonic  pre- 
judices for  lofty  principles  made  the  same  boding 
motions.  Who  was  this  Toscanini,  with  a  great 
reputation  behind  him  in  South  America  and  Italy 
— lands  in  which  such  a  reputation  could  not — or 
at  any  rate  should  not — be  made?  First  of  all, 
he  conducted  absolutely  from  memory  and  he  had 
always  done  so.  Report  ran  that  he  carried  the 
scores  of  countless  operas,  and  to  the  last  minutiae 
of  detail,  in  an  abnormally  susceptible  and  re- 
tentive memory.  Gk)ssip  told  how,  within  a  week, 
he  could  so  absorb  the  music  and  the  text  of  a  most 
intricate  modern  music-drama,  poring  over  it  at 
the  piano,  reading  and  rereading  it  for  hours  and 
for  whole  nights  at  a  time,  until  it  was  photo- 
graphed upon  his  memory — yet  not  merely  photo- 

[3] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

graphed,  but  visualized  there  as  a  living  and  com- 
municable thing.  He  had  so  carried  twenty-two 
operas  in  his  head  in  one  season;  he  could  recall 
as  many  more  with  a  little  study.  Singers  and 
players  who  had  worked  with  him  bore  unanimous 
testimony  to  the  completeness  and  the  accuracy  of 
Mr.  Toscanini's  memorizing.  He  knew  the  smallest 
details  of  the  music  or  the  composer's  glosses  upon 
it.  He  knew  every  line  of  the  text  and  the  stage 
directions.  He  had  corrected  out  of  easy  recollec- 
tion errors  in  parts  that  had  escaped  his  most 
meticulous  predecessors. 

And  lo!  it  was  all  true.  He  did  so  conduct  when 
he  appeared  first  at  the  Metropolitan.  He  has  so 
conducted  ever  since.  He  conducted  so  again  when 
he  passed  to  symphonic  music  as  conductor,  on  oc- 
casion, of  the  Metropolitan  orchestra  and  when  he 
lately  traversed  America  as  conductor  of  the  newly 
assembled  orchestra  of  the  Teatro  alia  Scala  of 
Milan. 

At  the  Metropolitan  when  he  took  in  hand  a  new 
production,  a  fresh  revival,  or  even  the  preparation 
of  a  repertory  piece  for  which  he  was  to  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  first  time,  never  in  the  whole  his- 
tory of  the  opera  house  had  rehearsals  been  so 
thorough.     Mr.  Toscanini  came  to  them  with  not 

[4] 


CONDUCTORS 

only  the  whole  opera — music  and  drama  alike — in 
his  head,  but  with  as  clear  an  image  of  what  in 
every  direction  he  would  achieve  with  it.  He 
schooled  his  orchestra  not  only  as  a  body,  but 
choir  by  choir,  sometimes  almost  instrument  by 
instrument.  He  counseled  the  singers  in  their 
parts  not  only  at  rehearsals,  but  for  hours  in  pri- 
vate study  in  their  rooms.  He  received  the  chorus 
from  the  thorough  preliminary  preparation  of  one 
of  his  lieutenants  and  then  worked  with  it  as  with 
his  orchestra.  He  had  a  keen  eye,  a  fertile  imagi- 
nation, a  quickness  and  sureness  of  expedient  with 
settings  and  lighting,  with  the  whole  ordering  of 
the  stage.  Separately  he  worked  at  each  element  in 
the  production  of  an  opera  until  every  one  con- 
cerned in  it  was  thoroughly  prepared  in  his  indi- 
vidual share  and  in  his  cooperation  with  others. 
Then,  in  the  ifinal  rehearsals,  he  coordinated  all 
these  elements — orchestra,  phorus,  singing-players, 
the  illusion  of  the  stage,  the  whole  music,  the 
whole  drama — into  the  unit  of  the  image  he  had 
reasoned,  imagined  and  kept  in  his  mind  from  the 
start. 

If  Mr.  Toscanini  was  unsparing  to  all  his  forces, 
he  spared  himself  even  less.  If  he  would  not  rest 
until  the  last  detail  of  preparation  had  been  as- 

[5] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

sured,  the  result — in  such  unified,  complete  and 
polished  performances  as  the  Metropolitan  had  not 
hitherto  known — justified  him.  Since  Seidl's  time 
no  conductor  there  had  so  stamped  himself  upon 
the  operas  that  he  undertook.  None,  either,  had 
accomplished  so  much  with  them,  and  they  ranged 
from  Gluck's  "Orpheus"  and  "Armide"  to  Dukas's 
"Ariane"  and  Verdi's  "Otello";  from  Wagner's 
"Tristan"  to  Wolf -Ferrari's  "Donne  Curiose."  In 
spite  of  the  wiseacres,  the  impression  spread  that 
these  were  the  ways  of  an  operatic  conductor  of 
the  first  rank  and  that  these  were  the  results  such 
a  conductor  accomplished — ^though  he  did  happen 
to  be  an  Italian. 

For  Mr.  Toscanini,  seemingly,  conducting,  and 
particularly  orchestral  conducting,  is  primarily 
self-expression.  Obviously  none  but  him  knows 
the  purposes  and  the  processes  with  which  he  ap- 
proaches a  piece  of  music  and  finally  brings  it  to 
performance;  while,  unless  he  is  different  from 
most  conductors,  he  himself  may  hardly  be  con- 
scious of  them.  Clearly,  however,  by  the  evidence 
of  the  concert-hall,  he  is  not  of  those  who  would 
first  discover  the  composer's  thought,  emotion,  pro- 
cedure, idiosyncrasy,  and  then  bear  them  to  the 
audience  as  fully  as  they  may.     Of  course,  this 

[6] 


CONDUCTORS 

transmission  does  take  more  or  less  color  from  the 
transmitter  and  his  means — that  is  to  say,  from  the 
mind  and  spirit  of  the  conductor  and  the 
quality  of  his  orchestra;  but  within  these  limits, 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  objective  conducting.  In 
contrast  Mr.  Toscanini  seems  almost  wholly 
subjective.  What  he  would  exhibit  to  his  hearers, 
impress  upon  them,  infuse  into  them,  is  his  own 
reaction  to  the  music  in  hand.  The  composer  and 
the  composition  fall  into  second  place;  the  orches- 
tra becomes  no  more  than  a  responsive  and  impart- 
ing instrument;  the  conductor  is  "the  be-all  and 
the  end-all"  of  the  hour;  the  audience  listens  to 
him,  answers  to  him,  while  upon  its  perceptions  and 
sensibilities,  he  veritably  plays.  The  prelude  to 
Wagner's  "Tristan,"  the  soliloquy  of  Isolde,  dying 
and  transfigured,  flood  Mr.  Toscanini  with  emotion. 
Through  the  music  and  the  orchestra  he  outpours 
that  emotion  upon  a  whole  concert-room.  From 
Beethoven's  symphony  in  C  minor  he  receives  cer- 
tain sensations.  Those  sensations,  raised  to  white 
heat  in  the  fire  of  performance,  he  drives  home 
upon  his  hearers.  To  the  last  inflection  he  makes 
the  orchestra  his  voice. 

First  of  all,  as  every  great  conductor  must,  Mr. 
Toscanini  conducts  with  the  clearly  apprehending, 

[7] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

the  firmly  designing  and  the  finely  discriminating 
mind.  He  does  not  merely  memorize  his  music. 
He  grasps  its  substance  until  he  has  made  it  a 
part,  a  living  part,  of  himself.  Through  and 
through  he  knows  it  largely  and  knows  it  minutely. 
Comprehending  it  so,  he  can  preserve  its  unity. 
Each  detail,  and  each  accenting  of  a  detail,  falls 
into  its  due  place,  sometimes  insignificant,  some- 
times salient.  For  Mr.  Toscanini  discriminates 
as  he  conducts.  He  does  not  magnify  the  unim- 
portant or  make  the  important  monotonous.  There 
are  middle  voices  and  middle  shadings  in  his  con- 
ducting. It  does  not  alternate  heights  and  depths 
in  fictitious  contrasts.  In  every  composition  he 
practices  the  science  of  musical  architecture  and 
then  by  imagination  and  feeling  warms  it  into  an 
art.  To  "sit  under  him"  is  to  hear  the  art  of  musi- 
cal design  practiced  as  no  other  conductor  now 
practices  it.  Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  an  Italian 
conductor  may  have  intellect.  To  intellect  Mr. 
Toscanini  adds  imagination,  the  finely  subjective 
imagination  that  no  other  conductor  in  America  has 
possessed  in  such  degree  as  he.  It  is  the  divin- 
ing and  individualizing  imagination  that  is  the 
highest  attribute  of  a  great  conductor. 

[8] 


II.    Many-Sideb  Muck 

One  sort  of  conductor,  like  Mr.  Toscanini, 
invites  his  hearers  to  receive  his  impressions 
of  the  music  that  he  chooses,  to  listen  to 
Mozart  or  Beethoven,  Tschaikowsky  or  d'Indy, 
after  it  has  passed  through  his  temperament. 
He  plays  upon  his  men  as  some  pianists  play 
upon  their  instruments  in  order  that  the  or- 
chestra may  express  himself  quite  as  much  as  the 
composer  whose  name  stands  upon  the  program. 
Those  of  another  sort  regard  themselves  as  only 
means  to  an  end — and  that  end  is  the  clearest  and 
fullest  communication  of  the  contents  of  the  music 
in  hand  as  the  composer  wrought  and  felt  it.  These 
conductors  approach  a  given  piece,  be  it  a  simple 
symphony  by  Haydn  or  an  intricate  tone-poem  by 
Strauss,  with  an  eye  single  to  its  peculiar  traits. 
They  apprehend  its  structure,  assimilate  its  sub- 
stance, penetrate  its  moods,  assort  and  adjust  its 
details  to  the  underlying  or  dominating  musical 
and  poetic  content,  discover  its  accent  and  elo- 
quence, and  then  to  their  utmost  seek  to  communi- 

[9] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

cate  all  these  things  to  their  hearers.  They  differ- 
entiate each  piece  that  they  undertake  from  all  the 
rest.    They  give  to  each  its  individual  voice. 

Dr.  Muck,  when  he  graced  the  Boston  Orchestra, 
was  such  a  one.  He  sought  only  the  substance,  the 
spirit,  the  peculiar  life  of  the  music  as  it  came  from 
the  composer's  hand.  His  personal  distinction  was 
to  be  impersonal  before  his  music,  but  not  imper- 
sonal in  the  negative  sense.  Rather,  he  had  as 
many  personalities  as  there  were  composers  and 
pieces  on  his  programs.  He  made  himself  and  his 
orchestra  the  eloquent  and  the  characterizing  voice 
of  each.  No  conductor  of  our  time  has  seemed  to 
have  so  few  limitations  of  sympathetic  understand- 
ing and  answering  emotion. 

The  secret  of  this  discrimination,  this  truly  in- 
terpretative quality,  this  self-subordination,  lies, 
perhaps,  in  the  qualities  of  Dr.  Muck  as  man  no 
less  than  as  musician.  His  work  has  proved  him  a 
man  of  strong  and  fine  intellect,  of  alert,  nervous 
and  sensitive  mind.  He  was  schooled  in  the  liberal 
studies;  he  knows  other  arts  than  the  one  that  he 
practices;  he  has  lived  in  the  world  of  cultivated 
men  and  not  merely  in  the  world  of  makers  of 
music;  he  looks  upon  life  shrewdly  and  humor- 
ously. He  has  the  penetrating,  discriminating  and 
[10] 


CONDUCTORS 

orderly  mind  that  springs  from  mental  discipline 
and  mental  training.  He  understands  before  he 
feels,  and  the  breadth  and  the  fineness  of  his  under- 
standing he  has  proved  from  Bach  through  the  com- 
posers of  our  own  particular  place  and  hour.  But 
mental  qualities  alone  make  only  a  dry  conductor. 
He  must  have  emotional  understanding  and  respon- 
siveness as  well.  On  this  score,  again  as  his  work 
has  proved  him.  Dr.  Muck  is  no  less  finely  strung. 
His  is  the  alert,  sensitive,  nervous  spirit  that  enters 
into  the  moods  and  the  emotions  of  the  symphony, 
the  tone-poem,  or  the  concert  piece  before  him,  and 
that  seizes  and  reflects  them  vividly  and  vitally.  As 
he  has  proved  time  and  again,  he  is  sensitive  alike 
to  the  varied  poetry,  the  varied  drama,  the  whole 
range  of  the  expressive  quality  of  music.  He  has 
kept  it  an  emotional  speech.  Such  a  union  of  men- 
tal and  emotional  qualities  does  not  in  itself 
round  a  conductor.  He  must  add  to  them  the  in- 
trinsically musical  qualities — ^the  feeling  for 
beauty  and  poignancy  of  tone,  for  musical  design 
and  form  and  ornament,  for  the  underlying  and 
distinguishing  melody,  for  the  songful  utterance, 
for  the  charm  and  the  power  of  ordered  sound. 
Dr.  Muck  knew  no  less  this  purely  musical  sen- 
sitiveness.   He  is  the  man  of  intellect,  the  man  of 

[11] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

feeling,  who  has  found  the  conducting  of  music 
the  normal  and  instinctive  outlet  for  these  qualities. 
His  mental,  emotional  and  musical  traits  stood  ever 
in  even  balance. 

By  general  consent,  the  Boston  Orchestra  under 
Dr.  Muck  was  the  incomparable  orchestra  of  the 
world.  His  purpose  was  to  make  it  as  perfect  an 
instrument  as  he  could  compass.  He  would  not 
have  it  merely  more  eloquent  than  other  orchestras; 
for  that,  however  high  the  standard,  is  relatively 
a  common  criterion.  He  would  have  it  eloquent 
with  the  rare  and  ideal  eloquence  in  which  ful- 
fillment matches  vision.  To  that  end  he  shaped  his 
programs  and  ordered  his  rehearsals.  For  that 
end  he  lavished  all  his  powers  tirelessly  and  stimu- 
lated all  the  powers  of  his  men.  They  answered 
as  though  they  knew  and  felt  the  goal.  At  the  close 
of  his  long  last  term  in  Boston  the  orchestra  stood 
at  the  apogee  of  attainment.  It  was  as  perfect  an 
instrument  as  a  human  instrument  could  well  be. 
It  was  perfect  in  the  range,  the  balance,  the 
euphony,  the  elasticity,  and  the  sensibility  of 
the  blended  tonal  mass;  perfect  in  the  luminous 
utterance  of  music;  in  the  manifold  force  of  voice 
that  it  yielded,  in  diverse  richness  and  color- 
ing, in  the  variety  of  its  march,  in  rhythmic 
[12] 


CONDUCTORS 

suppleness  and  felicity,  in  its  eloquence  of 
mood  and  passion,  image  and  suggestion,  poetry 
and  drama.  The  orchestra  was  a  virtuoso  orches- 
tra in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word.  It  was  even 
more  than  a  virtuoso  orchestra  because  it  warmed 
its  virtuosity  with  glowing  beauty  and  winged  it 
with  the  multifold  strength  of  ordered  and  sensitive 
powers.  It  delighted  the  ear,  it  transported  the 
imagination.  Its  voice  was  an  emotion  in  itself. 
They  say  that  the  old  and  dying  Vieuxtemps  sent 
for  the  young  Ysaye  that  he  might  hear  one  of  his 
violin  concertos  played  as  he  had  imagined  it. 
So  more  than  one  composer,  of  old  or  newly  dead, 
might  have  been  fain  to  summon  the  Boston  Or- 
chestra under  Dr.  Muck  to  hear  it  play  his  music. 
The  fortunate  living  came  and  heard  for  themselves 
and  departed  rejoicing.  In  their  hearts  they  may 
have  even  said:    "Did  I  really  write  so?" 

It  is  perilous  to  bear  the  measuring  rule  to  the 
orchestral  Olympus.  But  surely  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  no  living  conductor  has  assembled  in  himself 
more  of  the  attributes  of  a  great  conductor  or  held 
them  in  juster  balance  than  Dr.  Muck.  Servans 
servorum  Dei — ^the  servant  of  the  servants  of  Gk)d 
— ^the  early  Popes  used  to  proudly  call  themselves. 
So  Dr.  Muck  might  have  called  himself  the  servant 
[13] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

of  the  composers  whose  music  he  played.  He 
transmitted  music  to  us  in  the  living  image  of  its 
form  and  substance,  in  the  voice  and  in  the  emo- 
tion, as  it  seemed,  in  which  it  was  created.  Divin- 
ing, he  imparted.  Imparting,  he  enhanced  and 
intensified.  For  in  him  is  that  faculty  of  divina- 
tion and  that  quality  of  impartment  which  differ- 
entiates the  great  conductor  from  the  merely  able 
practitioner  of  his  art.  The  composer  writes  in 
emotion,  sometimes  in  an  emotion  that  the  music 
hardly  embodies  and  releases.  Divining,  pene- 
trating, Dr.  Muck  enters  into  this  emotion,  trans- 
mits it,  and  sometimes  releases  and  heightens  it  as 
though  he  were  freeing  that,  which  from  sheer 
intensity  of  feeling,  holds  the  composer  almost 
tongue-tied.  As  widely  as  these  composers  range, 
so  ranges  Dr.  Muck's  divination.  And  to  do  and 
to  be  these  things  is  to  be  a  very  great  conductor. 


[14] 


III.    Mengelberg  and  Melodrama 

Mr.  Mengelberg  has  become  the  most  sought 
of  "prima  donna"  conductors.  He  does  not  ven- 
ture outside  of  symphonic  and  choral  music 
and  the  more,  then,  has  Europe  sought  him 
for  such  concerts  from  London  to  Petrograd. 
Now  he  is  come  to  America,  first  as  visiting 
conductor  of  the  lately  defunct  National  Sym- 
phony Orchestra  and  again  to  share  with  Mr. 
Stransky  the  conductorship  of  the  Philharmonic 
Society.  By  common  consent  Mr.  Mengel- 
berg ranks  high  in  his  profession,  applauded  in 
his  native  Holland,  in  adjacent  Germany,  and,  most 
of  all,  in  Paris.  His  energy  is  inexhaustible; 
journeying  has  become  second  nature  to  him ;  he  is 
a  quick  but  exacting  drill-master;  he  has  the  classic 
and  the  modem  repertory  at  his  fingers'  ends;  he 
is  a  conductor  of  both  individuality  and  power. 

Mr.  Mengelberg  conducts  lustily,  with  all  his 
heart  and  all  his  soul — and  also  all. his  body.  His 
right  hand  beats  the  measure  with  exceeding  clear- 
ness, firmness  and  precision.  His  left,  no  less,  is 
[15] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

seldom  in  repose  and  even  then,  it  must  be  caress- 
ing his  cheek,  so  used  is  he  to  making  some  use  of 
it.  With  his  left  hand  he  does  not  signal  instrument 
or  group  of  instruments,  as  most  conductors  do. 
He  does  that  apparently  by  the  concentration  of  his 
glance  upon  them  or  by  inward  reliance  upon  the 
players'  close  following  of  the  score.  Usually 
with  his  left  hand  he  is  writing  the  contours  of  the 
melody  upon  the  air,  flinging  out  emphases,  catch- 
ing and  concentrating  climaxes,  like  the  old  pic- 
tures of  Jove  in  the  classical  dictionaries  with  a  fist 
full  of  thunderbolts,  or  else  holding  the  orchestra 
in  the  hollow  of  his  palm,  as  it  were,  in  a  moment 
of  transition. 

By  these  tokens,  Mr.  Mengelberg  is  a  conductor 
who  seeks  large  and  emphatic  effect  out  of  whatever 
music  he  undertakes,  who  relies  upon  sharp  con- 
trasts, who  spends  little  pains  upon  exposition  and 
the  refinements  of  expression,  and  who  is  insensi- 
tive to  the  middle  gradients  of  power.  Being  so 
minded,  he  hoists  the  finale  of  Beethoven's  Fifth 
Symphony  for  example,  from  plane  to  plane  of 
excited  jubilation,  holding  the  music  and  the  or- 
chestra momentarily  suspended  in  his  Jove-like  fist 
for  some  gentler  and  contrasting  measures.  Being 
so  minded,  he  also  takes  the  slow  movement  of 
[16] 


CONDUCTORS 

that  same  symphony  with  a  robustness  that  does 
violence  to  its  imaginative  and  capricious  quality 
and  that  insistently  coarsens  it.  In  similar  fashion, 
the  gentler,  the  feminine  melody  as  it  were,  of  the 
first  allegro  hardly  finds  its  voice.  No  sooner  does 
it  appear  than  Mr.  Mengelberg  sends  the  first  mas- 
culine melody  crashing  down  upon  its  head,  even 
though  the  music  so  loses  all  quality  of  contrast. 

Yet  when  the  contrast  can  be  emphatic,  Mr.  Men- 
gelberg delights  to  magnify  it.  By  this  time,  nearly 
every  one  knows  the  sublimity  of  the  first  measures 
of  Strauss's  "Zarathustra" — the  long-held,  dark 
and  surging  organ  point,  the  flaming  trumpets,  the 
resilient  and  resplendent  strings,  the  mighty  flood 
of  tone  that  flings  Zarathustra  in  the  sunrise  forth 
upon  the  world  and  the  problem  of  living.  Mr. 
Mengelberg  is  powerful  with  it;  he  would  pile  every 
orchestral  richness  upon  it;  he  would  make  the  tone 
of  his  band  like  a  great,  free,  releasing  voice. 
Then  ensues,  in  the  tone-poem,  the  passage  of  "The 
Back- World's  Men" — chromatic,  crabbed  and  dun. 
Mr.  Mengelberg  seizes  such  a  contrast  and  drives 
it  into  the  imaginations  of  his  hearers.  Similarly, 
just  before  the  beginning  of  the  exuberant  close  of 
the  overture  to  "Der  Freischiitz"  he  must  almost 
[17] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

choke  the  orchestra  into  concentrated  suspense  that 
it  may  blaze  forth  into  the  brilliancy  of  the  coda. 

It  is  so,  too,  with  Mr.  Mengelberg's  measuring 
of  the  quality  of  tone  that  he  draws  from  his  men. 
He  would  have  it  very  soft  and  very  shadowed — 
and  no  conductor  can  achieve  a  more  exquisite 
pianissimo — as  in  the  beginning  of  this  same  over- 
ture. Or  he  would  have  it  at  the  other  extreme  of 
power,  brilliancy  and  elasticity  as  in  the  "Dance 
Song"  of  "Zarathustra."  Between  he  seldom  finds 
middle  voices,  shaded  colors,  subtle  accents. 
Whatever  he  does,  he  must  do  at  the  highest  of  in- 
tensities, each  in  its  kind.  Of  course  these  diverse 
intensities  are  highly  exciting  and  highly  obvious. 
They  have  as  manifestly  their  limitations.  They 
make  Mr.  Mengelberg  a  conductor  in  terms  of  melo- 
drama. 


[18] 


IV.      MONTEUX  THE  ViSUALIST 

In  Boston,  succeeding  Dr.  Muck,  after  the  half- 
forgotten  interregnum  of  Rabaud,  now  dwells 
the  ablest  of  the  Parisian  conductors — Pierre 
Monteux.  Of  them,  young  or  old,  he  only  has  es- 
caped the  rut  in  which  orchestral  concerts  in  Paris 
live,  move  and  fulfill  their  dull  being.  From  this 
openness  of  mind,  from  this  eager,  assimilating 
curiosity  spring  programs  that  in  catholicity  of 
choice,  range  forward  and  range  backward,  free- 
dom from  every  sort  of  prejudice  are  unequaled  in 
Europe  or  America.  Mr.  Monteux  is  a  widely 
read  musician  who  adds  incessantly  to  his  reading; 
wherever  new  men  rise  writing  in  new  manner, 
thither  he  turns  an  inquiring  and  usually  a  welcom- 
ing ear.  He  has  the  wisdom  to  perceive  that  the 
most  enduring  classics  are  staled  by  too  frequent 
repetition ;  that  the  routine  of  familiarity  may  dull 
even  a  masterpiece.  Hence  a  wholesome  discre- 
tion with  the  "standard  repertory";  and  persistent 
and  often  fruitful  search  for  overlooked  music  of 
established  composers.  Scarcely  a  conductor  in. 
[19] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

the  exacting  task  of  program-making  better  assorts 
the  old  with  the  new;  the  immediately  interesting 
with  the  permanently  valuable;  the  demands  of  the 
day  with  the  scope  of  the  years.  To  an  open,  as- 
similating mind,  he  owes  again  his  quick  percep- 
tion of  American  standards  in  symphonic  concerts, 
his  sense  of  the  public  they  assemble,  his  ready 
conformity  to  the  ways  of  a  new  world.  Possibly, 
too,  such  a  plastic  temperament  gives  him  his  firm 
yet  elastic  grasp  upon  practical  orchestral  affairs. 
Each  of  the  preceding  conductors  of  the  Boston 
Orchestra,  except  such  a  mere  stop-gap  as  Rabaud, 
served  it  well.  None  has  served  it  better  than  Mr. 
Monteux,  saving  it  from  dissolution,  re-forming, 
re-practicing,  restoring  it,  when  secession  threat- 
ened it — and  all  this  as  the  one,  the  inevitable  thing 
to  do. 

As  conductor,  Mr.  Monteux  excels  with  music 
dependent  for  impression  upon  play  of  rhythm  and 
vibrancy  of  color,  music  also  of  romantic  content 
or  dramatic  movement.  He  has  gathered  long  ex- 
perience as  conductor  of  the  Russian  Ballet  with 
mimes  and  dancers,  long  experience  in  opera 
houses  with  singers  and  stage.  Out  of  this  ex- 
perience, he  brings  into  the  concert-hall  the  objec- 
tive, the  visualizing  sense.    He  cherishes  the  large, 

[20] 


CONDUCTORS 

keen,  direct  impression  upon  his  hearers.  Modem 
and  ultra-modem  music  of  the  dance,  as  Ravel  or 
Stravinsky  has  written  it,  quickens  him.  Romantic 
music  of  the  nineteenth  century — of  Weber,  Ber- 
lioz, Liszt — similarly  spurs  him.  With  both,  he 
seems  to  visualize  progress  and  illusion  as  he  might, 
and  did,  with  the  opera  and  ballet  in  his  years  in 
the  theater.  He  is  equally  eloquent  with  classics 
inviting  such  treatment — the  overtures,  the  Fifth 
and  the  Seventh  Symphonies  of  Beethoven;  while 
to  the  other  German  masters — say  Brahms,  Schu- 
mann, Schubert,  Mendelssohn — ^he  brings  warm 
feeling  and  sensitive  ear  to  instrumental  melody. 
He  bears  home  to  his  hearers  Schumann's  roman- 
tic exuberance  and  moodiness.  He  revitalizes  Men- 
delssohn; his  is  a  luminous  rather  than  a  rugged 
and  abstruse  Brahms.  Only  eighteenth-century 
music  occasionally  evades  him;  since  with  it  his 
hand  is  not  always  quick  and  supple  to  shade,  since 
too  often  he  chooses  the  square-cut  period.  There, 
however,  he  seldom  fails  to  interest;  while  like  all 
conductors  of  the  Boston  symphony  concerts  he  has 
steadily  ripened  under  both  the  freedom  and  the 
exactions  that  are  their  standards.  It  is  not  Mr. 
Monteux's  way  to  blaze  for  a  day;  he  prefers  the 
steady,  the  cumulative  glow. 

[21] 


V.    The  Songful  Stock 

They  say  in  Chicago  that  now  and  then  Mr. 
Stock  fancies  his  audience  saying  to  itself  at 
sight  of  his  presence,  familiar  these  many 
years,  and  at  sound  of  his  orchestra's  voice: 
"There  he  is  again."  The  dread  need  not  haunt 
him.  For  although  the  Chicago  Orchestra  comes 
too  seldom  to  Eastern  concert-halls,  when  it  does 
come  its  worth  speaks  for  itself;  while  as  clear  is 
the  quality  of  its  conductor,  Frederick  Stock. 

His  band  is  as  clear-minded  and  quick  to  his 
will  as  was  Dr.  Muck's  of  old  in  Boston  or  Mr.  Tos- 
canini's  Milanese  of  nearer  memory.  As  for  many 
a  year  and  to  the  finer  and  more  enduring  credit, 
Mr.  Stock,  conducting,  is  all  for  the  music  and  not 
at  all  for  himself.  Hence  no  conscious  or  uncon- 
scious assertion  of  "personality"  upon  hearers;  no 
displayful  exercises  in  the  concert-room.  In  his 
study,  he  peruses  and  penetrates  a  piece  in  hand; 
in  rehearsal  he  prepares  it  and  the  orchestra  for 
performance.  In  public,  he  has  only  to  reassert 
his  will  upon  the  orchestra,  to  resummon  the  com- 

[22] 


CONDUCTORS 

poser  to  voice.  His  large  and  flowing  beat  seems 
of  the  simplest;  his  left  hand  restrains  oftener  than 
urges,  sets  no  spirals  upon  a  throbbing  air.  Within, 
but  firm  upon  both  band  and  audience,  is  the  force 
that  plumbs  the  depths  of  orchestral  song, 
gains  the  heights  of  orchestral  sonority.  As 
he  proves  in  the  first  movement  of  Rakhmaninov's 
Symphony  and  again  in  the  Finale,  or  in  the  final 
surge  of  Isolde's  death-song,  Mr.  Stock  excels  in 
the  advance  and  recession,  the  suspensive  stay,  the 
sustained  flood,  the  deep-laid  foundation  while  the 
surface  boils,  which  is  the  conductor's  art  of  climax. 
As  he  proves  in  the  Russian's  Adagio  and  upon 
many  another  neighboring  page,  he  commands 
equally  unfolding,  intensifying,  ascending  instru- 
mental melody.  He  chooses  the  pace  that  reveals 
it;  knows  the  long  gradient  that  is  mounting  path; 
feels  the  modulation  accenting  and  diversifying 
progress;  holds  phrase  to  phrase  in  unbroken  un- 
dulation; keeps  background  as  warm  as  line  is 
clear. 

Finely,  too,  he  diff*erentiates  and  characterizes 
melody.  So  to  discover  the  song  of  symphonic 
music  and  enfold  his  hearers  therein,  so  to  ply  sym- 
phonic climax  and  sweep  listeners  upon  it  is  to  be 
eloquent,  masterful  conductor.  For  the  most  dis- 
[23] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

tinctive  quality  in  Mr.  Stock  is  his  ability  to  bear 
orchestra  and  audience  deep  into  the  music,  to  hold 
them  fast  within  its  voice,  progress,  spirit. 

Accessory  virtues  are  many.  As  a  whole,  Mr. 
Stock  hears  and  feels  the  music  in  hand,  regardful 
of  unity,  nowhere  sparing  pains.  Many  a  conduc- 
tor, having  wrenched  the  prelude  of  "Tristan"  from 
the  voice  of  fate  into  the  voice  of  desire,  having 
gained  the  climax  of  that  ceaseless  longing,  lets 
the  rest  slide  "any  old  way"  into  the  measures  of 
Isolde's  soliloquy.  Mr.  Stock  perceives  and  conveys 
the  descent  of  that  music,  sated,  numb,  wearing 
itself  into  silence  and  nothingness.  However  ear 
and  imagination  may  hear  the  content  of  Rakhmani- 
nov's  Symphony  it  is  no  mean  design  in  tones. 
Clear-minded,  plastic  of  hand  with  such  architec- 
ture, Mr.  Stock  maintains  the  large  ascent,  the 
structural  unity.  He  is  as  sedulous  with  the  pro- 
portions of  orchestral  tone;  he  seeks  and  gains  its 
sustained  richness;  its  momentary  incisiveness 
within  his  own  ears,  upon  the  ears  of  his  audience. 
Few  conductors  achieve  better  than  he — and  his  or- 
chestra with  him — the  depth  and  glow  of  Rakh- 
maninov's  or  Wagner's  harmonies.  They  are  ac- 
cording to  his  own  mind,  heart  and  time.    As  he 

[24] 


CONDUCTORS 

adjusts  details  like  threads  into  a  fabric,  so  does 
he  discover  and  intensify  the  outstanding  strand. 

Mr.  Stock  can  make  an  orchestra,  a  music  flash. 
Only  one  shortcoming  persists  in  him.  Discerning 
and  practiced  conductor,  he  heeds  rhythm.  Once 
and  again,  as  in  the  Scherzo  or  the  Finale  of 
Rakhmaninov's  symphony,  he  makes  it  beat  high. 
Whenever  the  composer  wills,  he  sustains  it.  But 
to  his  younger  hearers,  perhaps  overswayed  by  a 
custom  and  a  pleasure  of  the  day,  often  comes  the 
wish  that  he  would  sharpen,  intensify,  whirl  with  it. 


[25] 


VI.    Stokowski's  Progress 

Of  the  younger  conductors  now  working  in 
America,  Mr.  Stokowski  is  unquestionably  the 
best  equipped,  the  fullest  tested.  Surface 
shortcomings  he  once  had  in  a  certain  display- 
ful  attitude  toward  his  audiences,  which  he  has 
nearly  outgrown;  in  a  certain  inclination  toward 
social  prestige  which,  again,  he  may  discover  in 
the  long  run,  is  a  vain  thing.  As  conductor  there  is 
no  mistaking  his  ability  with  romantic  music  of 
any  period  or  any  school,  with  the  pieces  of  the 
modems  and  the  ultra-modems,  with  whatever  is 
sharply  rhythmed,  warmly  colored,  variously  im- 
passioned, largely  voiced.  In  all  such  music  he 
conducts  with  imagination  and  eloquence,  vividly 
designing,  ardently  projecting,  with  flashes  of  rare 
insight,  with  strokes  of  clear  power.  Finesse  and 
elegance  may  still  somewhat  elude  him  with  the 
eighteenth-century  masters;  his  severer  classics 
may  lack  a  measure  of  poise,  may  miss  grave  and 
deep  intensities;  but  Mr.  Stokowski  still  stands  in 
the  waxing  years.     Moreover,  as  he  has  amply 

[26] 


CONDUCTORS 

proved  in  Philadelphia,  his  standards  of  orchestral 
technique  are  high;  while  he  can  gradually  impose 
them  upon  his  forces.  When  he  first  took  over  the 
Philadelphia  Orchestra  and  for  an  appreciable 
period  thereafter,  it  was  a  mediocre  band.  Now  it 
plays  with  a  precision,  pliancy,  fluency  and  balance 
of  tone,  with  a  vitality  of  rhythm,  a  roundness  of 
period,  a  pervading  warmth  and  resilience  that  are 
surely  Mr.  Stokowski's  handiwork  upon  it. 

Latterly  no  orchestra  in  the  United  States  has 
gained  so  much  in  prestige  as  that  which  Mr.  Sto- 
kowski  leads.  For  years  he  has  been  gradually  bet- 
tering the  personnel  and  the  playing  of  the  band; 
for  years  he.  has  been  ripening  himself  as  conduc- 
tor. Now,  as  the  way  is  with  such  progress,  the 
outcome  seems  suddenly  to  stand  clear.  At  home 
in  Philadelphia,  in  New  York  and  in  the  other  cities 
that  the  orchestra  regularly  or  occasionally  visits, 
it  has  been  more  applauded  and  better  supported 
than  ever  before.  The  expert  have  found  new  and 
lively  interests  in  its  concerts,  while  less  exacting 
hearers  have  drawn  fresh  pleasure  and  stimulation 
from  them.  From  many  a  side  it  is  possible  to 
hear  warm  praise,  to  discover  a  new  respect  for  the 
Philadelphia  Orchestra.  Especially  among  musi- 
cians, "it  is  in  the  air"  as  the  phrase  goes,  that  the 

[27] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

Philadelphian  band  is  the  risen  orchestra  in 
America.  For  that  very  reason,  it  is  beginning  to 
attract  individual  players  of  a  quality  that  it  has 
much  needed.  Before  long,  if  it  can  finally  escape 
one  and  another  hampering  condition  of  the  past, 
it  bids  fair  to  be  the  orchestra  that  Mr.  Stokowski 
deserves.  At  last  Philadelphia,  like  Boston  and 
Chicago,  is  tasting  the  sweets  of  pride  in  an  or- 
chestra that  has  given  the  city  prestige  in  the  arts. 

By  the  tokens  of  recent  seasons  Mr.  Sto- 
kowski and  Mr.  Monteux  are  now  the  most  inter- 
esting conductors  of  symphonic  music  in  America. 
Mr.  Stock,  Mr.  Damrosch,  Mr.  Stransky,  are  now 
fixed  quantities,  little  likely  to  change;  Mr.  Men- 
gelberg,  too,  is  what  he  is;  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  and 
Mr.  Ysaye  are  relatively  at  the  beginning  of  their 
careers  as  conductors  by  profession.  Not  one  of 
these,  imless  it  is  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch,  has  the  per- 
sonal distinction,  the  individualizing  force  and 
quality  of  Mr.  Stokowski.  To  none  of  them  do 
audience  and  orchestra  more  clearly  react. 
Whether  the  listener  agrees  or  disagrees  with  his 
version  of  a  particular  piece,  it  is  not  possible  to 
hear  it  and  him  with  indifferent  ears.  Whatever 
the  number  in  hand,  he  strikes  the  fire  that  gives 
vitality  to  the  music  and  individuality  to  the  per- 

[28] 


CONDUCTORS 

formance.  He  commands  at  need  the  delicate  or 
the  puissant  hand.  He  conducts  plastically  and 
with  imagination.  His  ear  measures  the  tone  of 
his  orchestra  while  his  spirit  kindles  it.  He  de- 
signs as  well  as  colors.  He  is  open-minded  to  any 
and  all  deserving  music;  he  has  the  characterizing 
faculty  when  he  plays  it.  New  years  and  widening 
opportunity  have  still  to  deepen  and  to  refine  these 
qualities,  but,  as  they  stand  now,  they  set  Mr.  Sto- 
kowski  high  among  the  leaders  of  American  or- 
chestras. He  has  overcome  or  put  by  not  a  few  of 
his  earlier  infirmities  and  in  that  self-mastery  is 
best  proof  of  his  new  quality  and  place. 


[29] 


VII.    Stransky  and  Strife 

Temperance  is  not  the  distinguishing  grace 
of  either  the  eulogists  or  the  detractors  of 
Mr.  Stransky.  Those  who  admire  him  ar- 
dently aver  that  he  is  one  of  the  foremost  of 
living  conductors.  His  detractors  rush  as  far  in 
the  other  direction.  In  their  ears,  Mr.  Stransky 
has  not  a  merit  in  the  concert-room ;  he  is  the  merest 
charlatan  among  conductors,  which  is  much  too 
arrogant  and  sweeping  an  assertion  to  persuade 
those  of  us  who  try  to  keep  fair  and  open  minds 
about  music  and  musicians  as  about  all  things  else. 
Moreover,  harping  upon  a  man's  "sincerity,"  like 
most  speculation  about  motives  that  we  do  not  know 
at  first  hand,  is  a  ticklish  business  and  may  be 
left  as  one  of  the  "extra-hazardous"  pastimes  of 
the  yoimg. 

As  usual,  the  workaday  truth  probably  lies 
somewhere  between  the  two  extremes.  Mr.  Stran- 
sky is  not  a  Nikisch  or  a  Muck  or  a  Toscanini.  No 
more  is  he  a  conductor  to  be  dismissed  with  a  pet- 
ulant sneer.  How  capable  and  thorough  a  drill 
[30] 


CONDUCTORS 

master  he  is,  the  Philharmonic  Society,  under  him, 
has  clearly  shown.  For  its  old  massive  exactness 
Mr.  Stransky  substituted  the  elastic  precision  with 
which  it  now  plays  either  under  his  own  or  a  vis- 
iting conductor's  baton.  It  plays  with  euphony  in 
the  several  choirs  and  in  the  whole  orchestra,  with 
rhythmic  suppleness  and  vitality  or  with  diversity 
of  appropriate  tone.  Throughout,  the  wood-wind 
choir  and  the  horns  are  good  to  hear  and  virtuosi 
clearly  sit  among  them.  The  strings  have  gained 
in  suavity  and  luminosity  of  tone  and  in  capacity 
for  instrumental  song,  though  they  have  never  be- 
come edgeless  and  shimmering.  The  old  Philhar- 
monic was  a  band  of  power  and  little  else;  now  the 
tradition  has  yielded  in  every  choir  except  the 
brass,  which  still  overdrives  itself  or  is  overdriven. 
By  so  much  Mr.  Stransky  has  served  the  Philhar- 
monic Society  and  its  public  well,  and  by  so  much 
he  proves  that  he  has  a  hand  and  ear  for  the  finer 
distinctions  of  orchestral  playing.  He  has  his 
feeling  for  the  subtler  qualities  of  music,  too,  as 
he  often  shows,  and  for  such  strokes  of  tonal  elo- 
quence as  the  celebrated  entrance  of  the  horns 
toward  the  end  of  Strauss's  "Don  Juan."  Indeed, 
the  playing  of  the  tone-poem,  more  than  of  any 
other  piece,  exemplifies  Mr.  Stransky's  dominant 

[31]    . 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

qualities  as  a  conductor.  He  is  all  for  the  "effect" 
that  shall  play  on  the  instant  and  unmistakably 
upon  the  susceptibilities  of  his  hearers.  He  would 
keep  them,  as  it  seems,  at  a  high  pitch  of  nervous 
excitement.  He  would  bathe  them  in  his  tonal 
sonorities,  sting  them  with  his  rhythms,  sweep 
them  along  in  the  irresistible  current  of  the  music 
or  else  cradle  them  sensuously  in  its  sentiment. 
So  he  and  his  orchestra  fling  off  "Don  Juan"  and 
twenty  telling  details  and  as  many  more  glories  of 
the  suffusing  orchestral  color  go  by  the  board;  so 
he  can  make  the  march  of  the  magic  brooms  in 
Dukas's  scherzo  a  thing  of  fearsome  sonorities  and 
cumulating  beat.  Where  he  falls  short  is  in  the 
sensitive  modulation  of  his  music  by  the  fine  in- 
stinct and  imagination  that  dwell  in  conductors  of 
the  first  rank  and  in  the  subtlety — and  also  the 
truth — ^that  makes  an  "effect"  seem  not  an  effect, 
but  the  inevitable  and  irresistible  voice  of  the  music 
of  the  moment. 


[32] 


II 

SINGING-ACTORS 


1.     Garden — Mirror  of  the  Moderns 

PICK,  if  you  will,  twenty  technical  flaws  in 
Mary  Garden's  singing.  Discover,  as  it  is 
easy  to  discover,  that  hers  was  originally  a 
voice  that  might  have  served  admirably  the  pur- 
poses of  song.  She  has  preferred  to  make  it  an 
exalting,  emotional,  characterizing  and  delinea- 
tive  speech.  To  that  end  she  uses  all  her  vocal  re- 
sources; for  it  she  will  risk  any  vocal  sacrifice, 
attempt  any  vocal  distortion.  The  technician  will 
rage  at  her;  singing-teachers  count  her  the  abomi- 
nation of  desolation — in  their  trade;  while  sensi- 
tive ears,  trained  to  the  older  arts  of  pure  song,  in 
and  out  of  the  opera  houses,  do  writhe  now  and 
then  under  the  quality  of  some  of  her  tones  and 
the  methods  by  which  she  gains  them.  But  she 
attains  no  less  her  real  end.  Her  singing  is  the 
speech  of  the  part  she  is  playing.  In  her  tones 
float  the  traits  and  the  emotions  of  the  character 
portrayed.  She  colors  them  with  every  change  and 
process  of  mood,  with  every  subtlety  of  sugges- 
tion.   Hers  is  a  truly  magnetic  art,  the  art  of  the 

[35] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

singing-actress,  however  uneven  she  may  be  in  the 
exemplification  of  it,  near  its  fullness.  Hers  are 
modem  means  to  modem  ends.  With  her  came  a 
new  day  in  operatic  acting  and  singing. 

Miss  Garden's  singing — or  oftener  declamation 
— calls  to  a  more  vivid  life  than  any  other  singing- 
actress  now  may,  the  Thai's  of  Alexandrian  feasts 
and  the  desert  convent;  the  Louise  of  Montmartre 
the  day  before  yesterday;  the  little  juggler  whom 
the  Virgin  loved;  the  piteous  Melisande,  or  the 
tempestuous  and  brooding  Carmen.  Her  range  is 
wide  and  she  differentiates  each  of  the  characters 
she  chooses  from  it.  The  heavy-lidded,  panther- 
like Oriental  girl,  who  has  thought  the  thoughts  of 
passion  and  first  feels  it  when  the  white-shouldered 
Jokanaan  comes  from  Herod's  pit,  is  far  indeed 
from  the  Melisande,  wisp  in  the  wind  of  fate, 
trembling  to  the  impulses  she  hardly  knows,  mov- 
ing, living  as  the  vision  of  a  dream.  Louise  of  the 
dressmaker's  shop,  palpitating  to  the  surge  and 
the  heat  of  Paris,  is  no  less  remote  from  the  little 
white  monk,  who  sits  apart  and  downcast  in  the 
common  room  and  wonders  how  he,  too, — poor 
juggler  lad — shall  make  his  works  serve  Our  Lady. 
To  differentiate  and  to  individualize  her  charac- 
ters, to  call  them,  each  in  its  kind,  to  as  intense 

[36] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

life  as  is  her  own  is  Miss  Garden's  chief  purpose. 
And  the  chief  means  is  the  exalted  speech  that 
music  gives  her  when  such  imagination,  such  com- 
municating emotional  force  and  such  self-surrender 
as  are  hers,  may  color  her  tones. 

No  one  quite  knows  the  voice  of  Mary  Garden; 
but  her  hearers  know  the  voices  of  Louise,  of 
Thais,  of  Melisande  and  of  Salome.  She  is  less 
the  actress  who  happens  also  to  sing  (as  Whistler 
said  Leighton  "also"  painted)  than  the  actress  who 
has  discovered  that  music  affords  a  more  imparting 
and  thrilling  speech.  She  is  as  vivid  in  her  appeal 
to  the  eye.  Consider  Thais  with  her  train  of  danc- 
ing and  singing  girls  sweeping  into  Nicias's  house 
in  the  exuberant  joy  of  careless  and  sensuous  life; 
Melisande  still  and  dreaming  in  the  pale  sunshine 
of  the  terrace  by  the  empty  sea,  and  with  eyes  that 
search  its  emptiness;  Louise  rapt  in  the  intoxica- 
tion of  the  Paris  that  spreads  the  elation  of  living 
at  her  feet;  Salome  crouching  over  the  silent  cis- 
tern, whither  the  executioner  has  descended;  when 
even  Strauss's  orchestra  makes  stillness  searching 
and  expectant.  Of  such  are  the  unforgettable 
images  that  Miss  Garden  summons  to  the  eye  and 
the  imagination  of  her  audiences  that  her  charac- 
ters may  live  before  them.  They  live,  most  of  all, 
[37] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

because  of  the  superb  and  tireless  vitality  of  the 
singing-actress  behind  them.  Life — the  joy  of  it, 
the  exertion  of  it,  the  reward  of  it,  the  pleasure 
daily  renewed  of  all  these  things — bums  too 
brightly  and  too  eagerly  in  Mary  Garden  for  her 
impersonations  to  be  one  whit  less  alive  than  is  she. 
Even  when  she  exceeds  and  overemphasizes  as 
with  Fiora  in  "The  Love  of  Three  Kings,"  or  dis- 
torts as  with  Monna  Vanna  in  Fevrier's  music- 
drama  after  Maeterlinck,  she  errs  with  a  certain 
magnificence. 

Miss  Garden  is  the  guardian,  in  America,  of  the 
living  and  vivid  "tradition"  of  the  ultra  modem 
opera.  It  is  her  knowledge  that  directs,  her  spirit 
that  informs  whatever  is  accomplished  in  this 
country  in  the  renewal,  from  time  to  time,  of  the 
beauty  and  the  power  of  the  music  into  which  De- 
bussy has  wrought  Maeterlinck's  "Pelleas  and 
Melisande."  Each  hearer  of  the  opera  listens  for 
himself.  Some  there  are  whom  the  comparative 
newness  of  the  idiom  of  the  music  baffles  until  they 
lose  themselves  in  the  pursuit  of  Debussy's  har- 
monies, progressions,  modulations,  scales  and 
rhythms.  They  debate  of  the  details  of  his 
musical  speech  as  though  they  were  absolute 
and  exact  things  and  not  means  to  a  particular  end 

[38] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

of  expression.  They  inquire  whether  such  speech 
may  serve  other  composers  and  other  music-dramas 
— a  matter  of  pure  and  futile  conjecture.  They 
do  serve  Maeterlinck's  play,  and  beyond  that  pur- 
pose Debussy  had  no  occasion  to  go.  So  Miss 
Garden's  means  as  singing-actress  serve  the  ends 
of  the  opera.  Within  music  that  so  speaks  the 
spirits  of  the  personages  of  the  play;  that  stirs  with 
the  fate  that  creeps  about  them,  the  singing  players 
must  seem  the  figures  of  Maeterlinck's  dream  and 
Debussy's  music.  So,  indeed,  does  Miss  Garden 
wholly  vanish  into  the  being  that  she  would  simu- 
late. So  she  speaks  with  the  very  tones  of  De- 
bussy's music.  So  she  quivers  and  swims,  pales 
and  brightens  in  its  very  atmosphere. 


[39] 


II.    The  Fervors  of  Farrar 

Geraldine  Farrar  is  not  now  the  exquisitely 
voiced  singing-actress  that  she  once  was.  A  streak 
of  vulgarity,  of  showiness  for  its  own  sake,  has 
gradually  crept  into  her  singing  and  her  acting. 
But,  like  Miss  Garden,  she  knows  the  joie  de  vivre; 
she  possesses  a  rich  and  glowing  vitality  and  she 
imparts  it  to  whatever  she  undertakes  in  the  opera 
house  and  even  in  the  moving-picture  "studio."  On 
the  speaking  stage,  it  is  easy  to  believe,  she  could 
also  act.  Miss  Farrar  has  histrionic  imagination, 
diversity,  range  and  resource.  She  is  capable  of 
vivid  operatic  passion  and  "states  of  soul."  Her 
tones — except  in  the  upper  range  where  they  now 
and  then  turn  a  little  thin,  shrill,  pale — ^have  full- 
ness, surety,  warmth.  Operatic  comedy  and 
operatic  tragedy — if  it  be  not  too  heroic  or  too 
sublimated — are  at  her  command.  She  has  a 
quick  and  clear,  if  often  deliberately  bizarre, 
sense  of  pictorial  effect  in  the  theater.  Her 
preparation  of  her  parts  is  thorough  and  her  ambi- 
tion was  once  ceaseless. 

[40] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

Miss  Farrar's  Carmen  takes  high  place  among 
the  Carmens  of  our  stage.  Her  Tosca  has  many  of 
the  virtues  of  Mme.  Bemhardt's  in  the  theater — a 
Tosca  that  is  hot  with  Latin  intensities  and  change- 
ful with  quick-coming  Latin  passions.  She  excels 
in  Puccini's  "Madama  Butterfly."  The  spirit  and 
not  the  surface  of  Butterfly  animates  her  acting  of 
the  part,  and  transforms  a  pathetically  sentimental 
drama  into  a  piercing  poetic  tragedy.  At  first  she 
erred  with  her  Butterfly  in  the  pursuit  of  a  sham 
and  superfluous  Japanese  realism.  Now,  and  in 
the  scenes  with  Pinkerton  in  the  first  act  in  par- 
ticular, she  has  lifted  and  refined  her  impersona- 
tion to  an  idealized  and  a  very  poignant  beauty. 
The  exotic  setting  fades  and  Cho-Cho-San  ceases 
to  be  the  Geisha  of  Nagasaki  and  becomes  the 
image  of  all  women  who  have  given  their  souls, 
when  men  wanted  only  their  bodies,  and  wanted 
these  only  until  it  was  time  to  ride  away.  Through 
the  second  and  the  third  acts.  Miss  Farrar's  origi- 
nal impersonation  was  vivid  with  significant  his- 
trionic strokes  and  piteous  with  the  emotions  of 
which  her  tones  were  the  living  voice.  She  de- 
ployed all  the  musical  and  histrionic  elements  that 
she  has  now  fused  into  a  whole  that  almost 
to  the  end  of  the  opera  sustains  itself  at 
[41] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

a  height  of  tragic  beauty  and  tragic  intensity. 
She  continues  to  idealize  the  girl  into  the 
poetic  and  romantic  beauty  that  she  has  sought 
in  the  first  act.  At  the  same  time  she  keeps  the 
searchingly  human  truth,  the  wringing  human  in- 
tensity of  Butterfly's  fate  and  emotions.  She  ac- 
complishes all  these  things  by  the  fused  arts  of 
the  singing-actress — the  heightened  expressiveness 
of  her  musical  speech  now  to  beauty  and  now  to 
poignancy  and  now  to  both,  and  the  histrionic 
action  that  is  as  the  visualization  of  the  character, 
the  moment,  the  emotion  and  the  music  itself. 

Within  these  limits  of  Butterfly,  Miss  Farrar 
fulfills,  and  idealizes,  all  that  a  singing-actress  may 
do,  and  with  the  beauty,  the  felicity  and  the  in- 
tensity of  her  artistry,  at  once  ordered  and  spon- 
taneous, she  warms  the  minds,  kindles  and  sways 
the  imaginations,  and  wrings  the  hearts  of  those 
that  see  and  hear.  Out  of  Miss  Farrar's  incar- 
nation of  Madama  Butterfly  the  new  art  of  the 
music-drama  of  our  time,  the  new  art  of  operatic 
impersonation,  clothes  Puccini's  music  and  Long's 
story,  becomes  Belasco's  play.  The  music  is 
mannered,  sentimentalized,  drenched  in  the  com- 
poser's instinct  for  the  eff"ective  theater.  Under 
the  thin  exotic  veneer,  the  fable  is  akin  to  the 

[42] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

music.  Upon  both,  from  Miss  Farrar  as  singing 
actress,  falls  the  finer  vesture  of  universal  human 
tragedy. 

The  bizarre,  the  showy,  the  vulgar,  but,  at  the 
same  time,  the  deep-seated  human  side  of  Miss 
Farrar  best  exemplifies  itself  in  her  acting  of  one 
of  her  recent  parts,  the  Zaza  of  Berton  and 
Belasco's  play  and  of  Leoncavallo's  hitherto  mori- 
bund opera.  The  music,  falling  within  easy  com- 
pass of  her  tones,  unexacting  upon  her  vocal  skill, 
leaves  her  unhampered  in  characterization  of  the 
personage,  in  projection  of  mood  and  intensifying 
of  emotion.  She  can  be  as  showy  as  one  of  her 
instincts  prompts  her  to  be  in  the  dressing-room  of 
the  cafe-concert;  every  pose,  gesture,  intonation 
may  reek  of  Zaza's  world.  The  more  bizarre  the 
means  and  outcome,  the  fuller  the  flavor  and  in 
such  a  part  Miss  Farrar  would  have  her  operatic 
characterization  "high."  The  opera  proceeds  along 
familiar  course  of  such  "contraptions"  of  the 
stage  and,  almost  within  the  hour,  the  singing- 
actress  is  the  repentant,  the  illumined,  the  trans- 
formed Zaza  touched  to  the  heart  by  the  music  of  a 
child,  putting  away  old  sins  for  new  graces.  Frank 
mechanics,  hackneyed  sentimentalism,  pseudo- 
emotion  of  the  theater  that  Rejane  herself  could 
[43] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

not  quite  clothe  with  human  quality.  And  lo!  out 
of  Miss  Farrar's  song  and  action  rises  image  of 
human  woman  prey  to  human  emotions,  conquer- 
ing herself  in  human  resolution.  The  Roman  for- 
gave much  to  one  who  had  loved  much.  No  less 
may  be  forgiven  Miss  Farrar  because  no  less  she 
humanizes — not  Zaza  merely,  but  almost  every  one 
of  her  personages. 


[44] 


III.     Jeritza:  Fused  and  Rounded 

When  an  astronomer  discovers  a  new-found 
comet,  he  probably  sees  it  more  vividly  than  in 
the  nights  when  he  is  calculating  its  orbit,  weigh- 
ing its  gases,  preparing  it  generally  for  scientific 
catalogue.  Similarly,  though  Marie  Jeritza  has  as 
yet  traversed  the  stage  of  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
House  through  only  a  few  months  and  there  taken 
no  more  than  five  parts,  the  years  to  come  will  con- 
firm and  assort  rather  than  widen  and  deepen  the 
impressions  of  audiences.  They  have  seen,  and 
will  continue  to  see,  her  as  a  woman  tall,  blond, 
lithe  and  lovely  as  any  Nordic  ideal.  They  have 
heard  her  as  a  singer  in  whose  voice  dwell  sen- 
suous beauty,  vibrant  power  and  transforming  color 
multifold.  They  have  discovered  her  as  an  actress 
whose  declamation  and  song  are  a  speech  of  trait, 
thought,  and  mood  as  the  drama  projects  them. 
They  have  found  her  an  actress  whose  pose  may 
crystallize  for  the  instant  a  personage  or  a  pas- 
sion. They  have  contrasted  the  static,  solitary,  re- 
mote illusion  of  her  Sieglinde — daughter  of  a  god 
[45] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

yet  still  half  woman — with  the  changeful  fires,  the 
quivering  stresses  of  her  Tosca — above  all  else 
daughter  of  the  theater.  Side  by  side,  they  have 
set  the  tremulous  sensibility  of  her  Elsa,  wistful, 
iridescent,  dreamlike;  the  sharp  contours,  the 
hard  surfaces,  the  shrill-strung  emotions  of  her 
actress  in  "The  Dead  City;"  her  primitive,  earthy 
Santuzza  in  "Cavalleria  Rusticana."  Out  of  all 
these  impressions  and  in  their  own  workaday  ver- 
nacular, Mme.  Jeritza's  audiences  count  her  a 
"personality" — ^the  first,  perhaps,  in  the  general 
view,  to  pass  the  threshold  of  the  Metropolitan 
since  Miss  Farrar  crossed  the  great  room  of  Capu- 
let's  house  in  a  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  of  1906. 

Agree  with  the  purists  that  cheapening  usage  has 
made  of  "personality"  a  label  common,  trite,  vari- 
ously meaningless;  yet  no  other  better  contains  the 
sum  of  Mme.  Jeritza  as  singing-actress.  No  doubt 
it  is  the  obligation  of  reviewing  to  analyze  and 
assort,  but  to  enumerate  her  abilities  is  by  no 
means  to  convey  their  commingled  quality.  1,  2,  3, 
4,  5,  6,  is  each  an  individual  and  significant  num- 
ber; but  they  must  be  marshaled  and  pronounced 
together  to  make  one  hundred  and  twenty-three 
thousand  four  hundred  and  fifty-six.  Presumably 
there  are  connoisseurs  in  the  beauty  of  women  quite 

[46] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

content  to  look  upon  Mme.  Jeritza,  lustrous  as  gold 
in  face  and  locks,  plastic  as  mercury  in  flow  of 
limb  and  torso.  Others  are  as  pleased  to  hear 
her  lambent  tones,  to  note  the  color  playing  aptly 
and  endlessly  over  them,  to  feel  the  imaginative 
and  propulsive  instinct  inflecting  and  winging 
them.  Yet  others  are  deeply  and  variously  moved 
because  of  a  sudden — and  thereafter  until  the 
opera  is  done — they  see,  know  and  feel  in  her 
Wagner's  Sieglinde  and  Elsa,  the  Tosca  of  Sardou 
and  Puccini,  the  Marie  of  Erich  Komgold  and — 
dimly  distant — of  "Bruges  La  Morte." 

In  a  word,  by  the  sum  of  her  powers  and  pos- 
sessions and  projection,  Mme.  Jeritza  upon  the 
stage  works  deep  and  manifold  illusion.  But  into 
the  personage  of  Tosca  or  Marie,  into  the  char- 
acter that  is  Elsa  or  Sieglinde  or  Santuzza,  enters 
the  personality  of  Marie  Jeritza.  And  from  that 
merging  are  bom  the  speech  of  song,  the  mirror  of 
face  and  body,  the  histrionic  definition,  the  whole 
means  of  impression  and  illusion  that  convey  to 
us  both  operatic  figure  and  singing-actress — always 
through  the  vesture  of  her  own  bright  or  wistful 
beauty.  Mme.  Jeritza,  upon  the  operatic  stage,  is 
not  one  quality,  or  two  or  three,  however  salient. 
In  herself  she  is  the  singing-actress  fused,  welded, 
rounded.  Molten  is  the  illusion. 
[47] 


IV.      ReNAUD — ^ACTOR  WITH  ToNES 

As  remarkable  an  impersonation  as  the  compara- 
tively new  and  glorious  art  of  singing-acting — of 
acting  enhanced  by  the  more  exalted  and  more 
penetrating  speech  of  music — has  achieved  in  our 
day  was  Maurice  Renaud's  Rigoletto,  a  perform- 
ance which  stands  in  memory  with  Temina's  Isolde, 
with  Calve's  Carmen. 

Renaud  was  not  an  operatic  personality  as  Jean 
de  Reszke,  for  example,  nakedly  was,  or  as  Miss 
Garden,  in  spite  of  her  range  from  Salome  and 
Sapho  at  one  extreme  to  Melisande  and  Griselidis 
at  the  other,  insistently  is.  None  of  us,  who  knew 
Renaud  only  across  the  footlights,  even  though  it 
was  an  acquaintance  of  many  years,  could  isolate 
his  personality  at  all.  We  knew  him  vividly,  in- 
timately, as  the  Rigoletto  of  Verdi's  opera,  as  the 
Don  Juan  of  Mozart's,  as  the  Mephistopheles  of 
Berlioz — more  truly  of  Gk)ethe — as  the  Athanael 
of  "Thai's,"  as  the  Wolfram  of  "Tannhauser," 
as  the  threefold  "malignant  force"  of  "The  Tales 
of  Hoffmann."    SJut  in  each  instance  he  so  iden- 

[48] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

tified  himself  with  the  operatic  personage  that  no 
chemico-critical  process  could  first  dissolve  and 
then  crystallize  him  out  of  it.  The  saying  used  to 
run  in  London  that  there  were  as  many  Lord  Rose- 
berys  as  that  nobleman  had  activities.  There  were 
as  many  Renauds  as  the  singing-actor  had  char- 
acters. The  man  who  split  himself  into  them  like 
the  germ  of  biological  process,  who  gave  them  what 
Mr.  Shaw  would  call  the  Life  Force,  kept  to  him- 
self. 

So  too  with  Renaud's  voice.  Ex  pede  Herculem. 
Ex  voce  McCormack  or  Galli-Curci.  By  their 
voices  they  are  known.  The  distinction  of  Caruso, 
for  another  example,  was  the  volume,  the  splendor, 
the  propulsive  force,  and  the  golden  mellowness  of 
his  tones.  Akin,  for  the  other  sex,  were  Mme. 
Melba's.  The  distinction  of  Mme.  Tetrazzini  was 
the  exquisite  brightness,  softness  and  limpid 
glamour  of  the  finer  range  of  her  voice.  With 
twenty  other  singers  it  is  the  sensuous  quality  of 
their  tones  and  the  easy,  pervasive,  answering 
sensation  to  it  that  most  commends  them.  Now 
Renaud's  voice  was  not  a  big  voice  and  even  in 
its  prime  it  had  no  golden  notes,  no  sensuous 
splendors.  No  one  ever  praised  it,  even  in  those 
best  years,  for  the  mere  brightness  and  softness  of 
[49] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

its  texture.  It  was  never  a  vibrant  voice,  in  the 
common  sense  of  generally  communicating  quality. 
It  could  never  be  overwhelming  by  its  own  pro- 
pulsive force.  It  began,  as  it  remained,  an  expres- 
sive voice.  Fate  gives  voices;  men,  by  their  intel- 
ligence, imagination,  ambition,  industry  and  artis- 
tic conscience,  train  them  in  the  shaping  and  the 
transmission  of  the  tone,  in  the  molding  and  the 
adjustment  of  the  musical  phrase,  in  all  the  nice- 
ties and  all  the  suggestions  of  diction.  There  are 
voices  that  thrill  or  charm  of  themselves,  and  there 
are  voices  that  stir  and  allure  by  what  they  impart 
and  the  manner  of  the  impartment.  In  this  second 
category  lies  the  truer  and  finer  artistry  of  song; 
and  through  all  his  career  Renaud  practiced  it 
with  increasing  acuteness  and  resource  to  steadily 
finer  and  more  various  result.  He  was  the  singer 
by  dint  of  intelligence,  imagination  and  knowl- 
edge, as  well  as  by  grace  of  voice  and  labor;  and 
the  longer,  therefore,  did  he  remain  the  singer. 
Such  artistry  preserved  Mme.  Sembrich  to  im- 
usual  length  of  vocal  days.  It  preserved  Renaud 
even  longer. 

Because  Renaud  was  so  complete,  adroit  and  re- 
sourceful in  the  artistry  of  song  in  the  narrower, 
more  technical  sense,  his  tones  were  the  surer,  finer 

[50] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

and  more  varied  in  expressive  quality.  His  voice 
became  as  the  voice  of  the  monk  in  "Thais,"  of  the 
demon  of  "The  Damnation  of  Faust,"  of  Don 
Juan,  of  Rigoletto,  of  the  mooning  minstrel  in 
"Tannhauser," — the  more  illusively  because  he  had 
the  means  as  well  as  the  will  to  transform  and  to 
color  it.  His  tones  bore  suggestion  of  the  haunted 
and  the  tortured  devotee;  of  the  melancholy  and 
fathomless  devil;  of  the  finely  amorous  and  finely 
irresistible  cavalier  ever  eager  to  savor  new  loves, 
and  for  mental  as  well  as  sensuous  satisfactions ;  of 
the  senile  malignancy,  the  passionate  affection  or 
the  passionate  vindictiveness  of  the  jester;  of  the 
dreaming  and  tender  knight  of  the  Wartburg — bore 
all  these  things  so  diversely  and  illusively,  because 
by  adroit  finesse  and  not  by  wrenching  violence, 
he  infused  them  with  emotional  or  characterizing 
significance.  So  long  as  opera  is  opera,  acting 
within  it  will  have  its  inescapable  drawbacks  and 
limitations.  Under  the  footlights  sits  the  relent- 
less orchestra  and  at  every  turn  the  singer  must 
meet  it.  Sing  he  must  or  sing  he  ought  at  what- 
ever cost  of  facial  play.  His  pace  must  be  as 
slow  as  the  unfolding  of  the  music,  though  the  zest 
for  histrionic  speed  quiver  within  him.  Emotional 
or  characteristic  as  he  would  make  his  musical 
[51] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

speech,  he  must  yet  keep  the  musical  integrity  of 
his  declamation.  Fertile  as  he  may  be  in  signifi- 
cant details,  he  must  deal  oftenest  with  large  and 
elemental  emotions  finding  outlet  in  large  and  ele- 
mental situations.  In  comparison  with  the  actor 
by  the  spoken  word,  he  is  hampered  at  every  turn 
by  the  limitations  of  his  medium,  and  the  more 
difficult  and  remarkable  becomes  his  achievement 
if  by  operatic  impersonation  he  discloses  and  sus- 
tains a  character  and  imparts  its  moods  and  pas- 
sions. His  compensation  is  the  possession  of  an 
exalted  speech  that  often  is  more  poignant  and 
vivid  than  the  spoken  word.  That  speech  is  musi- 
cal tone.  Thereby  above  all  else  the  singing-actor 
acts,  and  therewith  Renaud  excelled. 


[52] 


V.    Chaliapin  the  Mighty 

For  Chaliapin,  as  our  American  world  has 
lately  rediscovered  him,  there  are  two  distinct  pub- 
lics. One,  in  New  York  as  seat  of  opera,  knows 
him  near  and  vividly  as  Boris  Godunov  in  Mu- 
sorgsky's  like-named  music-drama ;  recalls  him  dis- 
tantly and  dimly,  after  sixteen  years,  as  the  Mephis- 
topheles  of  Bo'ito  or  Gounod,  the  monstrous  or 
the  meeching  Don  Basilio  of  Rossini's  "Barber." 
The  other,  scattered  over  a  thin  hinterland  nearly 
operaless,  has  heard  him,  unless  it  have  a  Rus- 
sian past,  only  as  a  singer  of  the  concert  hall. 
There,  as  some  say,  his  fellow  Russians,  though 
they  flock  also  to  the  opera  house,  like  better  to 
hear  him.  No  sooner  has  he  come  to  the  platform 
than,  after  the  Russian  manner  between  audience 
and  artist,  they  establish  an  intimate  commerce. 
His  broad  blond  countenance  beams  with  happy 
promise,  his  whole  massive  figure  radiates  an 
anticipating  readiness  and  good  will.  The  assem- 
bled company  responds  with  salute  and  welcome, 
settles  into  like  expectant  glow.  He  names  the 
[53] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

song  that  he  chooses,  since  he  follows  no  appointed 
program;  he  sings  it,  passes  to  another  and  an- 
other still.  By  this  time  out  of  stored  memories 
his  hearers  have  also  made  their  choices.  Exuber- 
antly, vociferously,  they  demand  this  piece  or  that. 
In  as  large  good  humor  Chaliapin  makes  reply, 
conceding,  refusing,  deferring,  until  "all  in  good 
time"  (as  he  likes  to  retort)  are  content.  In  such 
process  and  progress,  audience  and  singer  become 
for  the  while  a  buoyantly  reciprocal  unit.  The 
like  of  Chaliapin's  concerts  hardly  another  singer 
or  audience,  west  of  Russia,  may  experience. 

In  a  sense  in  the  concert-hall  Chaliapin  makes 
momentary  miniatures,  but  in  the  succession  and 
sum  of  them  he  does  disclose  more  variously  than 
in  the  opera  house  the  range  of  his  characterizing 
powers  and  transmitting  faculties.  For  the  while 
—in  evening  clothes,  upon  a  bare  platform,  beside 
a  piano,  before  an  audience  laid  lengthwise 
through  a  tunnel  rather  than  circled  in  concentra- 
tion about  a  stage — he  becomes  the  shrewdly,  the 
comically,  drunken  miller  of  a  song  of  Dargo- 
mijsky;  the  frenzied  fanatic  of  Rimsky-Korsakov 
vowing,  almost  immolating,  himself  to  God  in 
desert  waste;  the  brigand-chief  of  Rubinstein, 
scornful  even  of  dooming  foes  victorious;  the  sar- 

[54] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

donic  teller  of  the  tale  of  the  flea — ^to  Musorgsky's 
music — in  Brander's  Goethian  cellar;  the  duelist 
with  both  death  and  life  through  Sasnovsky's  mor- 
dant, carking  song.  Or  forthwith,  at  the  turning 
of  a  leaf,  he  is  the  sensuous  and  artful  singer,  ac- 
complished in  all  the  inflections  and  shadings  of 
song,  making  serene  and  spacious  way  through  the 
"grand  style"  of  Beethoven's  "In  Questa  Tomba." 

For  Chaliapin  still  keeps  a  bass  voice  of  magnifi- 
cent sonorities  and  suavities,  may  stiU  at  will  ply 
the  arts  and  artifices  of  orthodox  song  Italianate. 
By  predilection  of  mind  and  spirit,  by  ambition 
become  habit,  in  quest  of  manifold  human  range 
and  deeper  humanity  of  expression,  he  prefers  to 
use  this  voice,  this  skill,  as  means  to  concentrated, 
conveyed,  almost  visualized  characterization. 
With  verse  and  music  in  degree  aiding,  his  tones 
set  the  scene,  impose  the  atmosphere,  summon  the 
personage.  They  drive  all  home  upon  his  hearers, 
for  the  instant  vital,  vivid,  complete  and  possess- 
ing. The  range  of  these  works  of  Chaliapin  in  the 
concert-hall  is  the  range  of  humanity. 

In  the  opera  house,  the  range  and  intensity  of 
Chaliapin's  characterizing  faculties  are  as  broad 
and  deep.  And  as  befits  such  environment  and 
aids,  ampler  and  more  graphic.     In  twenty  parts 

[55] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

of  Russian  opera  and  music-drama,  Western  Euro- 
peans, whom  he  has  visited  but  rarely,  do  not  know 
him.  Yet  they  have  the  advantage  of  us  beyond 
the  Atlantic,  since  they  have  seen  and  heard  him 
through  the  smoldering,  senile,  savagery,  the 
torturing  doubts  and  dreads  of  Tsar  Ivan  in  Rim- 
sky-Korsakov's  "Maid  of  Pskov";  through  the 
blindly  exalted  faiths  and  sacrifices  of  the  apostle 
of  the  "Old  Believers"  in  Musorgsky's  "Khovanst- 
china";  through  the  sombre,  corroding,  cruel- 
ties, the  brooding  hate  with  which  he  clothes  and 
characters — more  out  of  himself  than  out  of  the 
opera — Philip  II  of  Spain  in  Verdi's  "Don  Car- 
los"; through  the  Don  Quixote  of  universal  fan- 
tasy and  comicality,  and  of  as  universal  pang  and 
pity  that  he  similarly  leads  over  Massenet's  pale 
pages.  Memory  of  players  in  theater  or  opera 
house  is  pitifully  short.  For  the  while,  of  the 
parts  in  which  we  Americans  at  home  have  known 
Chaliapin,  we  remember  only  that  his  Mephis- 
topheles,  according  to  Bo'ito,  was  nearly  naked  in 
the  Brocken  Scene  and  that  his  Basilio,  according 
to  Rossini,  was  spotted  and  snuffly. 

Of  his  Boris  we  know  more,  since  Musorgsky's 
music-drama,  established  in  the  repertory  of  the 
Metropolitan  Opera  House,  awaited  Chaliapin  on 
[56] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

his  recent  return  to  America  as  it  will  at  all  future 
comings.  To  have  seen  him  in  the  scanty  scenes  in 
which  the  usurping  Tsar,  remorse-ridden,  holds 
the  stage — for  they  are  relatively  few  in  this 
"opera  of  the  Russian  people" — is  to  retain  the 
image  of  Boris,  sumptuous  and  splendid,  prideful, 
exalted,  majestic,  crossing  the  glittering  court  of 
the  Kremlin  on  the  way  to  coronation, '  at  once 
lording  and  blessing  the  subject-folk.  As  clear  and 
full  rests  the  image  of  the  gently  paternal  Boris 
in  wistful,  half -brooding  play  with  his  children  in 
the  still,  close  palace-room.  Of  a  sudden  rises, 
beside  and  against  it,  the  image  of  the  scheming 
usurper,  the  conniving  murderer,  whipped  by  re- 
morse as  by  flail  in  the  hand  of  specter;  fleeing, 
cringing  before  it;  clutching  at  the  old  Chouisky 
as  at  some  warm,  familiar,  human  thing.  Or  the 
Boris  whose  brow  already  drips  with  the  clammy 
sweat  of  death,  questioning  vain  tongues,  search- 
ing empty  air  for  the  solace  and  salvation  that  are 
not.  So  he  dies  drained  by  evil,  doomed  by  fate. 
As,  through  the  intensifying  lens  of  Chaliapin, 
the  eye  has  seen  these  images,  so  has  the  ear  heard, 
in  as  intensifying  a  speech  of  song,  the  very 
tongue  of  Boris  and  of  Musorgsky  for  him.  The 
few  but  spacious  phrases  of  the  scene  of  corona- 

[57] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

tion;  the  milder  words,  the  softer  accents  of  the 
palace-room;  the  scurry  and  welter  of  the  meas- 
ures of  remorse — ghosts  on  the  crupper;  the  eager 
leap  to  Chouisky  and  a  living,  human  world;  the 
pent,  groping,  stilling  memories  of  the  end — all 
speak  through  Chaliapin.  The  singing-actor  strips 
the  Tsar  to  the  bared  soul.  No  secret  of  him,  of 
Musorgsky's  music,  of  Pushkin's  drama,  does  he 
fail  to  penetrate.  Yet  by  complementary  power,  as 
insistent  and  unflagging,  alike  in  the  broad  outlines 
and  in  the  detail  inset,  he  has  recomposed,  revital- 
ized, magnified  and  isolated  Boris.  Puissance  of 
illusion  multiples  this  completeness  of  conception. 
The  mighty  personality  of  Feodor  Chaliapin  has 
absorbed  even  the  mighty  personage  that  was  Boris 
Godunov. 


[58] 


VI.    Caruso — To  His  Utmost 

In  this  queer  operatic  world  of  ours  there  have 
been  no  audiences  like  those  which  Caruso  assem- 
bled because,  in  truth,  there  have  been  no  singers 
like  Caruso.  A  large  part  of  his  hearers,  what- 
ever he  sang,  seemed  to  come  from  those  who  re- 
garded him  as  one  of  the  unique  personages  of  the 
time,  as  Paderewski  was  to  be  seen  and  heard 
among  pianists  or  Mme.  Bernhardt  among  players. 
This  company  go  to  see  her  though  they  know  not 
a  word  of  French  and  barely  heed  the  play  when 
she  is  off  the  stage.  So  they  hear  Paderewski, 
though  the  piano  and  its  "literature"  are  sealed 
books  to  them,  and  so  they  heard  and  saw  Caruso, 
careless  of  the  opera  in  which  he  was  appearing  or 
of  the  part  that  it  yielded  him.  Enough  for 
them  that  they  looked  upon  him  and  listened  to 
him. 

And  what  manner  of  Caruso  went  they  forth  to 
see  and  to  hear?  Surely  not  the  Caruso  who  used 
to  stand  four-square  to  the  audience  and  pour  forth 
his  flood  of  song.    But  rather  the  singing-actor  who 

[59] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

learned,  with  commendable  perseverance,  to  pene- 
trate the  skin  of  a  character,  to  be  personage  in 
the  musical  drama,  and  not  merely  an  acclaimed 
tenor  singing  this  part  or  that.  In  the  last  decade 
of  his  service  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  he 
was  no  longer  the  tenor  of  the  "golden  voice,"  en- 
rapturing audiences  by  the  opulence  of  his  meUow 
and  glowing  song;  for  the  quality  of  Caruso's  tones 
and  his  ways  with  them  much  changed  with  the 
passing  years.  As  time  matured  his  voice  so  did 
it  ripen  his  imagination  and  develop  his  means 
until  his  tones  became  the  voice  of  his  personage, 
until  he  himself  entered,  perforce,  into  part  and 
drama.  Not  for  nothing  may  a  singer,  though  he 
be  as  eminent  as  Caruso,  work  year  after  year 
with  Toscanini. 

If  the  old,  golden  magnificence  had  somewhat 
gone  out  of  the  singer's  voice,  tones  remained 
that  carried  and  imparted  emotions  variously  and 
poignantly,  that  revealed  the  personage  who  was 
singing,  that  took  color  and  accent  from  the  mo- 
ment of  the  drama,  that  characterized,  delineated, 
projected.  If  once  the  only  emotion  that  the  voice 
provoked  was  of  the  sensuous  delight  of  beautiful 
and  puissant  sound,  it  continued,  to  the  very  end, 
to  thrill.     But  with  a  different  thrill.     It  pleased 

[60] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

the  exacting  as  much  as  it  satisfied  the  lovers  of 
"big"   and   sensuous  tone.     The  magnificent  so- 
norities, the  freedom  of  utterance,  the  breadth  of 
phrase,  the  flood  of  sustained  tone,  the  large  vocal 
intensities  endured.     It  is  indeed  true  that  Ca- 
ruso kept  to  the  end  certain  vocal  idiosyncrasies 
that  made  expert  listeners  grieve  and  lay  heaters 
rejoice,  that  he  would  make  his  vocal  effect  even 
if  for  the  moment  he  halted  the  flow  or  altered  the 
rhythm  of  the  music.  Yet  the  next  moment  he  could 
shape  a  phrase,  sustain  a  melody,  shade  a  measure 
with  an  exquisite  sense  of  tonal  beauty  and  an 
equally  subtle  skill.    Moreover,  in  the  quality  of 
that  voice  as  it  flooded  the  theater  was  a  pleasure 
and  an  emotion  that  stirred  the  common  heart  of  all 
that  heard.     There  was  that,  too,  in  Caruso  which 
commended  the  man  behind.     A  more  honest,  a 
more  earnest  singer,  more  willing  to  do  his  utmost 
for  his  audience  and  for  the  opera  has  never  drawn 
breath.     Simple-minded    he    also    was,    and    his 
simplicity  and  his  sincerity  saved  him  in  operatic 
impersonation.     Admittedly  he  was  no  very  plau- 
sible actor  in  romantic  parts,  but  when  in  his  hon- 
est continence  did  he  off'end  or  amuse  the  eye? 
And  in  his  last  and  mellowed  days  he  was  not  far 
from  the  "grand  style"  of  John  of  Leyden  in  "The 
[61] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

Prophet"  and  Eleazer  in  "The  Jewess."  Or  give 
him  a  homely  personage  among  Italian  folk  to  play 
and  he  played  him  vividly  and  well.  He  was,  for 
instance,  a  believable  and  amusing  comedian  in 
Donizetti's  "L'Elisir  d'Amore."  He  characterized 
the  Canio  of  Leoncavallo's  melodrama  stirringly 
and  truthfully. 

In  "Pagliacci"  Caruso  had  a  clear  notion  of  his 
personage  that  he  wrought  into  a  workable  and 
cumulating  histrionic  design.     From  year  to  year, 
he  amplified  it  with  much  illuminating  and  defin- 
ing detail.     Recall,  for  instance,  the  exaggerated 
whimsies  of  a  strolling  player  with  which  his  ma- 
tured Canio  cozened  the  crowd  at  the  beginning  of 
the  play;  the  wiping  of  the  powder  from  his  face 
as  of  a  player  resuming  relievedly  his  own  per- 
son; the  intensity,  brooding  or  ominous,  that  he 
threw  into  his  declamation  in  the  play  while  in 
action  he  was  but  doing  the  part;  the  fashion  in 
which  he  went  emotionally  dead  when  he  had  struck 
down  Nedda;  how  he  returned  a  little  to  himself, 
dragged  out  of  his  throat  "la  commedia  e  finita" 
and  huddled  away,  distraught,  blind,  blank  again. 
Always,  too,  Caruso's  song  was  the  speech  of 
Canio,  as  elemental  in  all  his  moods,  as  direct 
and  full-voiced  in  his  emotions,  as  simple  or  sav- 

[62] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

age  as  the  character  really  is.  He  made  tellingly 
but  untheatrically  the  swift  change  from  playful 
banter  over  the  lightness  of  women  to  the  amorous 
and  vindictive  words  about  a  wife  that  he  already 
suspects;  he  did  not  overdo  the  celebrated  solil- 
oquy as  a  Canio  might  utter  it ;  he  sang  in  the  final 
scenes  with  the  accents  of  the  pain  and  the  passion 
that  rend  the  clown  amid  the  ironies  of  the  make- 
believe  and  the  reality.  The  music  of  Canio  suited 
the  best  compass  and  the  best  quality  of  his  ma- 
tured voice.  Hackneyed,  "popular"  and  all  the 
rest  of  the  damning  adjectives  of  superior  right- 
eousness his  Canio  may  have  become.  But  it  re- 
mained one  of  the  most  remarkable  operatic  im- 
personations of  our  time. 


[63] 


VII.    Fremstad — Mind  and  Will 

Mme.  Fremstad  had  not  been  long  in  opera 
houses  before  she  discovered  that  the  field  of  the 
mezzo-soprano  is  relatively  small.  To  perceive 
was  to  will  the  gradual  quest  of  a  new  range,  little 
by  little  enlarging  the  compass  of  her  voice  and 
persuading  it  to  new  timbres.  Her  voice  ever  bore 
the  marks  of  the  strain  the  transformation  had  laid 
upon  it,  but  the  change,  with  all  its  pains  and  penal- 
ties, was  worth  the  accomplishing.  For  had  she 
not  achieved  it  our  opera  houses  would  have  lacked 
the  most  illustrious  singing-actress  of  Wagnerian 
parts  since  Lehmann  and  Temina.  Only  Mme. 
Easton  has  matched  her  since  in  the  singing  of 
them;  no  one  hereabouts  in  the  acting  of  them. 

By  force  of  penetrating  will,  by  keen  and  tire- 
less mental  energy,  by  goading  pride  of  achieve- 
ment, Mme.  Fremstad  seemed  to  devise,  compose 
and  project  most  of  her  impersonations.  She  was 
no  "temperamental"  singing-actress  who  seized  in- 
stinctively upon  a  few  elementary  emotions  and 
by  easy  ardor  and  readiness  of  means  gave  them 

[64] 


SINGING. ACTORS 

tonal  and  histrionic  life  and  being.  In  all  her 
parts,  except  possibly  Venus  in  "Tannhauser"  and 
Sieglinde  in  "Die  Walkiire,"  wherein  complete, 
secure  and  long-standing  impersonation  hid  every 
means  to  the  illusion,  it  was  possible  to  discover 
traces  of  her  processes.  Her  alert  and  tireless 
mind,  her  resolute  imagination  searched  out  of 
music  and  text  and  inner  vision  the  moods  and  the 
impulses,  the  rages  and  submissions,  the  raptures 
and  despairs  of  her  Isolde.  In  its  earlier  days, 
her  impersonation  no  more  than  laid  these  emo- 
tions side  by  side  in  flat  tints.  The  illusion  of 
tones  and  action  was  as  the  illusion  of  an  Isolde 
in  clear  outline  and  vivid  color  in  a  window  of 
glass. 

Then,  as  Mme.  Fremstad  ripened  the  impersona- 
tion and  herself,  these  emotions  began  to  appear  in 
the  round,  to  melt  their  lines  into  long  and  sweep- 
ing curves  of  feeling,  to  fuse  their  colors  into  a 
manifold  glow,  to  animate  the  whole  being  of  an 
Isolde  who  went  the  way  of  tragic  fate.  The  voice 
became  as  Isolde's  at  the  given  moment  and  in  the 
given  stress  of  the  music-drama ;  the  action  seemed 
the  spontaneous  and  inevitable  complement. 
Mme.  Fremstad,  as  Mme.  Fremstad,  added  to  it 
only  the  expressive  richness  of  her  tones  and  the 
[65] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

tragic  sweep  of  her  movements.  Her  impersona- 
tion was  no  longer  frescoed  upon  the  stage.  It  had 
its  being  there  in  the  emotional  life  of  music  and 
play.  Her  threefold  Kundry,  from  its  darksome 
and  impenetrable  wildness  in  the  first  scenes, 
through  its  sensuous  splendors  and  subtle  sugges- 
tion in  the  garden,  to  the  tranquil  beauty  of  the 
final  episodes  underwent  a  similar  evolution.  By 
fine  and  indomitable  will  of  imagination,  she  man- 
tled her  characterization  in  mystery,  shadowed  in 
the  earlier  episodes,  agonized  when  Klingsor 
evokes  her  magic  in  the  seductions  of  the  garden 
— ^they  are  half -mental  and  so  the  better  within 
Mme.  Fremstad's  powers — and  haloed  in  the 
transfiguration  of  the  end.  No  Kundry  of  the  in- 
ternational stage  probably  matches  hers.  Only  she 
and  Temina  have  made  head  against  a  perversely 
baffling  part. 

Mme.  Fremstad's  Isolde  and  Kundry  were  in- 
tricately composed,  as  Wagner's  music  and  char- 
acterization bade.  Each  was  at  once  a  finely  and 
largely  wrought  vocal  and  histrionic  design  sed- 
ulously proportioned,  colored  and  shaded.  Be- 
side these  her  Briinnhilde  seemed  a  simpler  im- 
personation, in  which  one  elemental  mood  or  pas- 
sion gave  place  to  another  and  each  was  trans- 

[66] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

lated  into  heroic  ardor  and  sweep  of  voice  and  ac- 
tion. Out  of  a  young  world  came  her  Valkyr, 
elate  and  high-hearted;  out  of  a  world  already 
shadowed  and  out  of  a  spirit  deepened,  she  called 
Siegmund  to  Valhalla.  The  high  heart  was  racked 
in  the  parting  with  Wotan  but  it  kept  its  pride. 
Then  the  exaltation,  the  desolation,  the  transfig- 
uration of  the  two  other  "Ring"  dramas — tragic 
passion  upon  tragic  passion — ^that  Mme.  Fremstad, 
upborn  by  the  music  and  by  her  will,  came  finally 
to  sustain  to  the  end.  There  were  moments  in  her 
Briinnhilde  when  her  voice  and  action  struck  swift, 
heroic  fire;  there  were  as  many  more  when  her  sus- 
tained intensity  of  passionate  utterance  and  pas- 
sionate pause  flooded  eye,  ear  and  imagination; 
and  once  and  again  the  still  magnificence  of  her 
repose  seemed  to  fill  the  stage. 


[67] 


VIII.    Coloratura  Contrasts — Tetrazzini 

AND  GaLLI-CuRCI 

Mme.  Tetrazzini  lingers  as  a  very  unusual  fig- 
ure on  the  operatic  stage  of  her  day.  She  is  the 
coloratura  singer  pure  and  simple,  who  sings  and 
does  little  else  besides,  of  the  sort  that  our  fathers 
and  grandfathers  were  cherishing  in  the  fifties  and 
sixties.  Her  parts  are  all  old  Italian — the  mel- 
lifluously  raving  Lucia;  Violetta  of  "Ah!  Fors  e 
Lui";  the  sorely  harried  but  steadily  songful 
Gilda;  Bellini's  maiden  among  Puritans  who  are 
singularly  expert  in  the  ornaments  of  song;  and 
the  wife  in  "Crispino"  who  crowns  her  conjugal 
devotion  by  the  brilliant  singing  of  "The  Carnival 
of  Venice*'  or  Proch's  "Air  and  Variations." 
Smilingly  through  these  parts  went  Mme.  Tetraz- 
zini, with  matronly  amiability  and  Florentine  good 
nature  fairly  oozing  from  her.  Not  a  penny  cared 
her  listeners  whether  to  the  eye  she  was  not  at  all 
like  Scott's  Lucy  Ashton,  the  Gilda  of  romantic 
girlish  fancies,  or  the  sleep-walking  peasant  girl 
that  strays  across  the  quivering  bridge  in  "La  Son- 

[68] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

nambula."  Mme.  Tetrazzini,  and  her  auditors  as 
well,  heeded  not  "interpretation."  She  was  there 
to  sing — and  sing  she  did  to  large  and  gen- 
eral pleasure,  with  feats  of  staccati  and  trill 
and  swelling  and  diminishing  of  the  voice — all  as 
though  they  were  the  impulse  and  chance  of  the 
moment,  when  Violetta  picks  up  her  train  or  Gilda 
climbs  the  steps  to  the  chamber.  Elsewhere  Mme. 
Tetrazzini's  voice  was  less  remarkably  ordered,  but 
it  was,  and  still  remains,  the  voice  of  an  unusual 
coloratura  soprano. 

Succeeding  Mme.  Tetrazzini  in  these  parts  and 
in  public  acclamation  came  Mme.  Galli-Curci. 
Yet  with  all  of  the  limitations  and  temptations 
these  "Roman  candle  operas,"  as  Mary  Garden 
calls  them,  impose  upon  a  singer,  Mme.  Galli- 
Curci  does  not  display  herself.  She  comes  out  of 
her  personages  only  to  acknowledge  the  applause  at 
the  end  of  a  "scene;"  to  repeat  a  few  of  the  glint- 
ing measures;  to  bow  casually  after  applauded 
"numbers";  while  everywhere  else  she  keeps  her 
tones  and  her  action  the  voice  and  the  bearing  of 
the  personage  in  the  circumstances  of  the  opera. 

In  the  "Mad  Scene"  in  "Lucia,"  as  one  gently 
distraught,  as  one  wistfully  seeking  the  betrothed 
she  may  not  find  for  the  wedding,  she  comes  upon 
[69] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

the  stage  with  longing  eyes,  troubled  face,  grop- 
ing gesture.  She  sings  the  first  measures — the  pure 
song — of  the  soliloquy  in  tones  so  soft,  light, 
clear  that  they  seem  to  float  upon  the  air;  they 
flow  from  her  lips  in  edgeless  sequence;  they  are 
simply  colored  with  the  longing  that  sees  but  may 
not  grasp — ^the  perfect  voice  of  piteous  vision 
blank  to  all  but  what  it  beholds  and  desires  within 
itself.  Perfection  of  voice  for  such  music  and  per- 
sonage, perfection  of  artistry  in  the  shaping,  the 
jointure,  the  curve  and  the  modulation  of  tone 
unite  to  perfect  illusion  of  the  character,  the  instant. 
Here  is  Donizetti's  music  sung  as  that  somewhat 
pedestrian  composer  may  hardly  himself  have  im- 
agined it. 

Mrae.  Galli-Curci — or  rather  Lucy  Ashton — 
passes  on  to  "Ardon  gl'incensi"  and  the  succeed- 
ing ornate  measures.  With  the  crystalline  sparkle 
of  her  staccati,  the  limpid  flow  of  her  runs  up  or 
down  the  scale,  the  purity  and  artfulness  of  her 
trills  in  crescendo,  the  clearness  and  the  bright- 
ness of  her  "skips"  (as  the  old  teachers  of  song 
named  them)  over  diflficult  passages,  she  weaves 
the  pattern  of  Donizetti's  intricate  measures. 
Upon  the  ear  they  fall  when  Mme.  Galli-Curci 
sings  them,  as  upon  the  eye  fall  the  arabesques 
[70] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

above  some  Moorish  doorway  in  the  ruins  of 
Granada  when  bright  Spanish  sun  shines  through 
them.  Yet  to  that  pattern  she  gives  the  voice  of 
rhapsody,  of  the  rhapsody  that  plays  childlike, 
delighted,  absorbed  with  haunting  delusions. 
Again  the  perfect  voice  of  coloratura  singing  as 
the  expressive  means  for  which  imaginative  com- 
posers employ  it.  Everywhere  indeed,  when  Doni- 
zetti so  embellishes  incidentally  Lucy's  song,  Mme. 
Galli-Curci's  voice  seems  to  flower  under  inner 
prompting  into  this  ornament.  Only  one  of  the 
feats  that  she  so  transmutes  into  expression  of 
mood  or  feeling  does  she  seem  once  and  again  to 
use  for  displayful  purposes — her  ability  to  swell 
a  long-held  tone — ^the  mesa  di  voce  of  the  old 
masters. 


[71] 


IX.      TiTTA  RUFFO — FOR  PoWER 

As  the  memoirs,  letters  and  essays  have  come 
down  to  us,  the  seventeenth  and  the  eighteenth  cen- 
turies seem  more  interested  in  their  men-singers 
than  in  their  women.  Half  the  anthologies  of  Eng- 
lish prose  contain  Addison's  essay  about  the  tenor 
who  slew  the  lion  in  the  London  of  Queen  Anne. 
Dr.  Bumey  recounts  more  of  the  men  that  he 
heard  when  he  wandered  through  the  concert- 
rooms  and  the  opera  houses  of  Europe  than  he 
does  of  the  women.  Out  of  the  records  of  the  time 
it  is  easy  to  reconstruct  the  men  that  sang  in  the 
"original  casts"  of  Mozart's  operas  in  Vienna ;  but 
they  usually  leave  the  women  pale  and  lifeless 
shadows.  The  nineteenth  century  acclaimed 
Mario,  Jean  de  Reszke  and  other  tenors,  Lablache 
and  other  basses,  Faure  and  a  baritone  or  two; 
but  it  was  rather  the  century  of  the  prima  donna. 
When  the  historians  and  gossips  of  music  begin  to 
delve  among  its  memorabilia,  they  are  likely  to 
find  much  more  about  Malibran  and  Alboni, 
Patti  and  Gerster,  Lehmanii;  and  Matema  than 
[72] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

they  will  about  the  tenors  and  the  baritones  that 
partnered  them  on  many  stages. 

In  the  present  century  the  men  seem  to  have 
their  inning  again.  With  us  in  America,  Caruso 
became  a  matter  of  course  from  long  famil- 
iarity with  his  voice  and  artistry;  but  when 
he  made  his  occasional  descents  upon  Paris,  Ber- 
lin or  Vienna,  the  public  received  him  as  of  old  it 
received  the  primi  donne,  with  no  whit  less  excite- 
ment and  acclaim.  He  happened  to  be  a  tenor 
in  a  time  when  eminent  tenors  were  few,  and  it  is 
the  good  fortune  of  the  high-voiced  among  men  to 
be  sought  and  extolled  above  the  baritones  and 
basses.  They  of  the  lower  voices  have  always 
been  plentiful  and  capable.  From  one  view  their 
numbers  and  their  ability  have  been  their  bane, 
and  they  have  shone  as  constellations  rather  than  as 
individual  planets.  Besides,  as  common  predilec- 
tions run,  they  take  "unsympathetic"  parts  in  most 
operas  and  while  they  may  impress  their  hearers 
mentally,  they  do  not  charm  them  sensuously. 

Then,  at  last,  in  this  operatic  age  of  men- 
singers,  a  baritone  stirred  the  same  excitement, 
wonder  and  mixed  admiration  as  have  the  primi 
donne  and  the  primi  tenori.  Next  to  Caruso,  Titta 
Ruffe  was  for  some  years  the  most  acclaimed 
[73] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

man-singer  in  Europe.  In  America,  at  his  first 
appearance,  he  proved  that  admiration  and  excite- 
ment over  primi  donne  of  both  sexes  are  by  no 
means  moribund  and  are  not  likely  to  be  unless 
human  nature  dies  too.  Caruso,  years  ago,  made 
his  debut  in  America  in  routine  fashion.  New  York 
learned  gradually  to  appreciate  Jean  de  Reszke. 
Mme.  Melba's  debut  in  the  nineties  was  a  chilly 
occasion.  But  Titta  RuflPo's  was  a  debut  compara- 
ble in  all  sorts  of  excitement — from  violent  admira- 
tion to  violent  detraction — ^to  Mme.  Tetrazzini's. 

Mr.  Ruffo  elected  to  appear  in  Hamlet  in  Am- 
broise  Thomas's  opera,  so  dead  and  buried  that 
even  in  Paris,  where  it  was  to  be  resurrected  for  his 
centenary,  the  director  of  the  Opera  had  to  search 
for  singers  who  even  cursorily  knew  the  parts  in  it. 
Mr.  Ruffo,  it  is  said,  is  more  ambitious  as  actor 
than  singer,  and  so  perhaps  this  phantom  of  a  real 
Hamlet  tempted  him.  He  could  hardly  have  known 
that  Latin  Hamlets  in  opera  or  drama  usually 
strike  Americans  as  queer.  Yet  in  spite  of  these 
handicaps,  his  acting  revealed  and  maintained 
two  distinctions.  It  has  a  singular  projecting 
power  and  a  remarkable  command  of  dic- 
tion and  tonal  coloring.  There  is  in  him  a  rare 
communicative  force  as  out  of  a  strong  and  vivid 
[74] 


SINGING-ACTORS 

personality  releasing  itself  in  a  similar  his- 
trionic temperament.  His  diction  is  as  puissant, 
too.  It  has  not  the  polished  elegance  of  Mr.  Zena- 
tello's,  for  example,  but  it  has  an  exceeding  clear- 
ness and  it  is  uncommonly  plastic.  His  transitions 
from  bald  declamation  to  songful  phrase  are  thrill- 
ing in  their  vocal  beauty  and  in  their  histrionic 
intensity.  The  voice  that  accomplishes  these  things 
is  a  very  big  voice,  still  in  the  noon  of  its  strength, 
and  maintained  by  the  utmost  vitality  of  technical 
resource.  In  its  highest  ranges  it  has  a  clear  tenor 
quality.  In  its  middle  course,  especially  when  Mr. 
Ruffo  is  not  propelling  it  to  the  full  as  he  is  too 
often  wont  to  do,  it  has  a  warm  and  songful  beauty. 
In  its  lowest  ranges  it  loses  body,  distinctive  tim- 
bre, and  becomes  an  ordinary  voice. 

What  Mr.  Ruffo  displayed  in  that  first  evening 
in  America,  he  has  shown  ever  since.  The  great 
power  of  tone,  the  great  resources  that  maintain  it, 
the  great  power  of  temperament  behind  it  are  at 
once  his  glory  and  his  peril.  They  are  his  peril 
when  he  drives  his  voice  and  makes  it  hard,  metallic 
and  merely  noisy.  They  are  his  peril  again  when, 
in  the  temptation  to  prolong  and  intensify  telling 
phrases,  they  produce  unsteadiness  of  tone.  They 
are  his  glory  when  they  enable  the  singer  to  hold, 
[75] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

expand,  magnify  and  illuminate  a  phrase  until  his 
tones  seem  to  flood  the  theater  and  sweep  wavelike 
to  a  climax.  Then  does  Mr.  RufFo  seem  possessed 
of  a  demon  of  mighty  song. 


[76] 


Ill 

SINGERS  OF  SONGS 


I.  McCoRMACK  For  All 

WHEN  a  renowned  singer  of  the  opera 
house  condescends  to  the  concert-hall, 
she — for  it  is  oftenest  she — usually  con- 
descends indeed.  Too  many  of  us  have  heard  Miss 
Farrar  rattle  a  careless  voice  through  a  "reel"  or 
two  of  songs;  or  Miss  Garden  variously  proving  her 
possession  of  "personality"  to  an  amused  audience; 
or  Mme.  Galli-Curci  showering  high  notes  pro- 
longed, as  so  many  bonbons  upon  her  hearers. 
Curiosity  and  nothing  else,  these  ladies  of  "the 
lyric  stage"  seem  to  agree,  has  assembled  the 
listening  company.  "Play  down"  to  it,  they  also 
fondly  believe,  and  let  integrity  as  artist  and  musi- 
cian go  hang.  Thereby,  they  harvest  vogue,  fame, 
money,  while  from  Trenton  even  to  Tulsa  mankind 
and  womankind  rejoice  in  them.  Yet  not  one  of 
them  excels  or  equals  John  McCormack  in  the  en- 
during favor  of  the  public.  Not  one  has  reaped 
a  singer's  reward  in  reputation  and  riches  as  he 
has  garnered  them.  "Any  old  way"  they  sing  in 
the  concert-hall;  while  he  plies  in  it  every  beauty 
[79] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

of  his  voice,  every  secret  of  his  skill.  'Round  and 
'round  they  go  in  hackneyed,  common,  showy  num- 
bers; while  steadily  he  widens  and  betters  the 
range  of  his  pieces. 

Mr.  McCormack  is  a  master  of  the  art  of  song 
and  therefore  stiU  a  student  of  it.  He  knows  the 
highways  and  the  byways  of  music,  and  therefore 
still  explores  them  that  they  may  yield  him  new 
matter.  He  keeps  warm  artistic  ambition  and 
artistic  conscience,  sparing  no  pains  of  prepara- 
tion, upbuilding  from  year  to  year  the  quality  of 
his  concerts.  If  he  makes  occasional  sacrifices  to 
his  public,  from  him,  as  from  no  other  whom  it 
frequents,  it  has  learned  many  a  true  quality,  many 
a  find  standard,  of  song.  If  he  must  prudently 
yield  his  hearers  their  portion  of  sentimentality,  he 
coxmters  with  the  rarefied  beauty,  often  high  and 
grave,  of  his  singing  of  ancient  music.  Scrutinize 
one  of  Mr.  McCormack's  audiences — and  find  in 
it,  taking  fill  of  pleasure,  not  a  few  connoisseurs  of 
music.  It  is  the  custom  to  call  him  a  "popular 
singer."  He  is  deservedly.  As  singing  goes  in 
these  days,  he  is  also,  and  quite  as  often,  an  aristo- 
crat of  song. 

Mr.  McCormack's  program  usually  begins  with 
a   group  of  eighteenth-century  airs.     And  what 

[80] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

other  singer  of  the  hour  more  arduously  turns 
ancient  pages,  so  often  shuts  the  book  with  treasure 
in  his  hands?  The  impression,  the  emotion  of 
these  songs — from  Peri,  from  Costanza,  from 
Bach,  from  Mozart,  and  from  the  early  Handel — 
is  of  pure  music  unadorned.  Mr.  McCormack  can 
risk  the  nakedness  of  such  song,  his  perception 
grasps  its  austerities.  He  can  carry  it  to  its  heights, 
understand  its  breadth,  respect  its  severities.  With 
Handel,  too,  in  his  later  manner — when  the  com- 
poser chose  to  lay  the  ornament  of  song  upon 
melodic  line  amply  phrased,  charged  again  out  of 
that  amplitude  with  a  magnificent  melancholy — 
Mr.  McCormack  is  master.  He  can  summon  as  by 
intuition  the  glow  of  Handel's  "grand  manner." 
The  books  tell  the  prowess  of  ancient  singers  in 
this  ancient  music.  Modems,  studious  of  it,  have 
reason  to  accept  Mr.  McCormack  as  such  voice. 

To  these  "old  airs"  usually  succeeds  a  mis- 
cellany of  classic  French,  Russian,  German,  Eng- 
lish pieces.  Over  all  of  them  plays  the  familiar 
beauty  of  voice — pure  tenor  still  with  no  reedi- 
ness  to  thin  it,  no  baritone  darkening  to  cloud  it; 
the  musician's  perception,  the  singer's  skill,  the 
imagining  and  intuitive  artist's  regard  for  pace, 
accent,  color;  the  tone  that  bears  all  three,  gives 
[81] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

life  and  character,  yet  keeps  its  own  sensuous  per- 
fection. These  are  Mr.  McCormack's  familiar 
virtues.  To  them  he  is  adding  the  newer  qualities 
of  maturing  years.  He  measures  sentiment  now 
and  seldom  overdoes  it,  unless  under  irresistible 
temptation  of  Irish  airs.  He  also  summons  the 
breadth,  the  force  of  the  dramatizing  singer  and 
at  no  cost  of  musical  tone.  Later  on  his  programs, 
inevitably,  will  come  the  humors,  the  heartaches, 
the  fancies  of  Irish  folk-pieces,  but  who  that 
knows  the  art  of  diction,  tastes  the  spice  of  in- 
nuendo, craves  the  pleasure  of  finely  spun  threads 
of  song,  would  have  the  singer  forego  these  num- 
bers? Finesse  and  fervor,  sublety  and  sentiment 
— it  is  possible  to  sing  even  "Mother  Machree" 
with  an  air  of  distinction. 


[82] 


II.    Rosing  the  Russian 

Most  of  us  in  the  Western  world  heard  first  of 
Vladimir  Rosing  when,  exiled  from  his  native  Rus- 
sia, he  descended  upon  English  concert-halls. 
There  he  won  quickly  no  little  note,  no  small  pub- 
lic; while  discriminating  reviewers,  worthy  of 
trust,  warmly  yet  persuasively  praised  him.  Often 
and  with  admiration,  the  major  cities  of  Britain 
heard  him  as  singer  in  his  own  concerts,  as  "as- 
sisting artist"  to  orchestras,  and  once  and  again  in 
opera.  Then  Mr.  Rosing  ventured  the  United 
States,  where,  though  the  reviewers  were  negligent, 
stirred  audiences  heard,  applauded  and  waxed  in 
regard  for  him.  A  few,  at  least,  were  aware 
of  the  coming  of  an  unusual,  an  engrossing  singer, 
a  singer,  too,  not  to  be  easily  compared  with  any 
our  concert-halls  have  much  known. 

Mr.  Rosing's  voice  is  a  tenor.  Heard  in  stripped 
song,  with  neither  characterization  nor  outpoured 
passion  to  cloak  them,  his  tones  are  of  clear 
Italian  quality,  even  as  Russian  music,  in  lyrical 
flow  in  the  opera  house,  often  becomes  Italianate. 
[83] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

By  this  token,  Mr.  Rosing  sings  vibrantly,  elasti- 
cally,  freely,  clearly,  yet  now  and  again  with  a 
perceptible  "whiteness,"  with  play  of  that  plain- 
tive note  which  in  Italian  song — and  at  passing 
moments  with  him — easily  becomes  nasal  and  wiry. 
Evidently  he  is  a  well  schooled  and  thoroughly 
practiced  singer.  When  he  believes  that  pure  song 
is  voice  to  the  music  in  hand,  he  sings  with  clear 
regard  for  well-shaped,  transparent  tone,  sustained 
line,  warm,  felicitous  Italian  phrasing,  adept  modu- 
lation, spun  transition,  plastic  progress,  apt  cli- 
max. 

Usually,  however,  Mr.  Rosing  prefers  to  make 
his  song  an  insistently  expressive  art.  In  his  tones 
he  would  define  and  project  character;  summon  pic- 
ture and  vision;  evoke  and  convey  passions  of  the 
mind,  the  soul,  the  body.  And  he  would  do  all 
these  things  to  the  utmost.  For  such  purpose,  he 
bends  or  breaks  rhythms,  chops  or  fuses  phrases, 
zigzags  the  melodic  line,  sharply  changes  pace  or 
accent,  emphasizes  contrast,  multiplies  climax.  To 
gain  these  ends  he  uses  unashamed  what  the  vestal 
virgins  of  song  call  vocal  tricks — ^the  falsetto,  for 
example,  or  the  long-sustained  note,  swelled,  di- 
minished, melted  almost  inaudibly  into  the  air. 
He  uses  them,  however,  not  as  display  in  shallow 

[84] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

Galli-Curcian  or  Tetrazzinian  fashion,  but  to 
achieve  a  discoverable  point  in  his  vocal  design. 
Above  all  else,  Mr.  Rosing  would  color  his  tones 
and  impress  upon  his  hearers  the  personage,  the 
passion,  the  picture  of  music  and  verse  as  they  have 
stirred  his  spirit.  If  the  accepted  arts  of  song  will 
so  serve  him,  he  uses  them  expertly,  effectively. 
If  they  are  less  viable,  he  chooses  his  own  means, 
employs  them  in  his  own  way.  Again  out  of  Russia 
comes  "the  new  singing."  Blessed  land,  whence 
always  there  is  something  new! 

To  such  pitch  has  Mr.  Rosing  carried  character- 
izing purpose  and  projecting  power  that  the  listener 
forgets  the  song  in  the  singer.  A  more  "personal" 
concert  than  one  of  Mr.  Rosing's  is  rare  indeed. 
Not  even  Chaliapin's  are  more  pervaded  by  a  single 
spirit.  He  proffers  a  few  words  of  explanation 
of  his  songs,  he  ventures  a  happy  interchange, 
Russian-wise,  with  his  audience.  He  spares  neither 
his  own  nor  the  audience's  emotion.  A  score  or  so 
of  pieces  will  stand  on  his  programs — folk-songs 
arranged  by  various  Russian  hands;  numbers  from 
Musorgsky,  Arensky,  Rimsky;  from  Dargomijsky, 
Grechaninov,  the  lesser  known  Bagrinovsky  and 
Nevstruev.  There  will  be  Glinka  humorous  and 
sporting  in  tones  with  the  clicking  rhythm  of  a  rail- 

[85] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

way-train;  Arensky  in  piteous  grayness  and  haunt- 
ing monotonies;  Cui,  stark,  woeful,  delirious; 
Borodin,  satirizing  swollen  and  worldly  conceit. 
With  his  tones  Mr.  Rosing  pictures — and  the 
listening  ear  opens  the  seeing  eye  as  variously — 
the  blank  horizons  of  the  endless  steppes,  the 
palaces  of  the  great,  the  cold  interior  of  the  peas- 
ant's hut.  And  there  is  always  truth,  and  also 
vision,  in  this  tone-picturing. 

Again  his  tones  are  the  voice  of  passion  and  then, 
most  of  all,  he  penetrates  his  hearers  with  deep 
illusion.  The  delirium  of  a  starved  peasant  cry- 
ing to  his  barren  lands;  the  great  cry  of  the  heart 
of  a  race  assembled,  multiplied,  released — in 
Grechaninov's  invocation  to  Russia — rise  to  tragic 
immensity.  Out  of  himself,  as  much  as  from  music 
and  verse,  Mr.  Rosing  makes  these  magnificences. 
Let  the  body  and  the  head,  flung  back  almost  in 
contortion,  the  spoken  tone,  the  sudden  gesture,  go 
for  the  accessory  histrionic  means  they  sincerely 
are.  It  is  the  transmitting,  the  impassioning  power 
of  Mr.  Rosing  that  conveys  such  sensation.  There 
is  rhetoric  in  such  singing  but  an  honest,  living 
rhetoric. 


[86] 


III.     Gulp  and  Completeness 

Julia  Gulp  is  unique  among  the  women  singers 
of  pure  song  in  this  generation.  Her  artistry  is 
comparable  to  the  artistry  which  distinguished 
Mme.  Lehmann  and  Mme.  Sembrich,  but  hers  is  a 
closer,  a  more  confining  frame.  In  the  interpre- 
tation of  folk-song,  the  song  of  homely  sentiment, 
and  in  the  interpretation  of  German  lieder,  she  has 
no  peers.  The  songs,  in  particular,  of  Schubert 
and  Brahms  naturally  invite  her — Schubert,  per- 
haps, by  the  lyric  sensibility  and  the  artful  modula- 
tion of  melody,  to  both  of  which  her  tones  and  tal- 
ents are  as  sensitive  as  a  mirror;  Brahms,  in  turn, 
by  the  large  sweep,  the  deepening  and  darkening 
coloring,  the  moody  intensity  of  not  a  few  of  the 
pieces  that  she  usually  chooses  from  him.  In  the 
sonorities  and  the  sustaining  power  of  her  tones, 
in  her  own  cast  of  mind  and  imagination,  is  that 
which  answers  richly  to  his  matter  and  manner. 

But  whoever  the  composer,  where  he  ends  she 
begins — in  the  tone-picturing  and  wistful  longing 
of  Schubert's  song  of  Suleika,  for  instance;  in  the 
[87] 


EIGHTH   NOT^S 

piteous  and  darksome  passion  that  swells  out  of  his 
"Madchen's  Klage";  in  the  homely  directness  of 
feeling  and  imagery,  the  universality  of  humble 
emotion,  elate  or  sorrowing,  that  makes  the  songs 
of  Franz  perennially  touch  the  hearts  of  human 
kind;  in  the  light  fancies  or  the  graver  moods  of 
Cornelius;  in  the  folk-song  note  that  Brahms  could 
strike  in  his  songs  of  the  loveliness  of  German  land- 
scapes, of  the  luring  coquetry  of  amorous  German 
girls,  of  rude  and  energetic  German  men-folk. 
There  is  that  in  the  mind  and  imagination  of  such 
composers  as  Schubert,  Brahms,  Wolf  and  Franz 
that  they  may  not  set  down  upon  music-paper 
though  they  stretch  notes  and  directing  words  to 
the  utmost.  For  they  can  do  no  more  than  seek  to 
enkindle  the  singer  and  leave  the  passion,  the  poe- 
try, the  vision,  the  scene  that  engrossed  and  fired 
them  to  her  answering  imagination.  Not  once  in 
vain  do  they  ask  of  Mme.  Gulp  such  fulfillment. 
And  when  the  balladry  of  England  or  Scotland, 
France  or  America  find  place  on  her  programs, 
Mme.  Gulp  is  also  intuitive  interpreter.  Folk-song 
it  is  the  custom  to  call  them.  Yet  some  one  must 
originally  have  made  them,  sung  them.  What  he 
imagined  and  set  in  his  notes,  Mme.  Gulp  fulfills 
in  her  tones  and  her  hearers  know  the  richness  of 
[88] 


SINGERS    OF   SONGS 

simplicity.  For  folk-pieces,  even  "arranged," 
ought  to  sound  as  though  the  singer  were  recalling 
them  or  inventing  them  for  the  first  time.  When 
Mme.  Gulp  sings  them,  they  do. 

There  is  no  word  but  splendor  for  the  voice  of 
Mme.  Gulp.  Her  lower  notes  have  their  soberly 
glowing  depths;  her  middle  notes  their  luscious 
and  opulent  fullness;  her  high  notes  their  radiant 
and  expansive  warmth.  Her  half-voice  is  of  vel- 
vety texture;  her  softest  tones  spin  the  gossamer 
filaments  of  beautiful  sound;  her  amplest  notes 
gain  its  richest  resonance.  And  always  those  notes, 
however  changeful,  proceed  in  unbroken  flow. 
Phrase  melts  into  phrase  with  no  more  outward 
sign  of  jointure  than  have  wavelets  in  the  water; 
modulation  seems  as  impulse,  yet  unerring.  And 
meanwhile  upon  her  song  in  such  voice  and  so 
ordered,  she  bestows  all  the  glories  of  color  that 
insight,  intuition  and  imagination,  analysis  and 
synthesis  may  yield.  Again  there  is  no  word 
but  splendor  for  the  vitalizing,  the  revealing,  the 
transmitting  quality  of  Mme.  Gulp's  song.  She 
harvests  the  poet;  she  garners  the  composer;  she 
enriches  both. 


[89] 


IV.    Gerhardt — German-Schooled 

Another  singer  of  German  lieder  less  impeccable 
and  with  clearer  limitations  than  Mme.  Gulp,  is 
Elena  Gerhardt.  Her  voice  is  most  pleasurable 
in  its  middle  tones.  With  them  her  technical  skill 
is  most  secure  and  adroit;  while  they  have  more 
variety  of  force  and  color  and  more  expressive 
quality  than  any  other  part  of  her  voice.  She  is 
mistress  of  sustained  feeling,  rapturous,  pictorial, 
homely.  She  sings,  for  example,  "Weyla's  Song," 
out  of  Hugo  Wolf,  a  glowing  picture  of  an  en- 
chanted island — such  an  island  as  rises  in  Boeck- 
lin's  pictures — ^and  the  glow  of  intense  longing  is 
in  her  tones.  In  another  vein  goes  the  "Brauner 
Bursche"  of  Brahms's  gypsy  songs — the  gay  vein 
of  the  youth  dancing  the  Czardas  with  his  sweet- 
heart, and  flinging  down  his  money  exultantly, 
showily.  She  excels,  then,  in  the  impartment  of  a 
single  mood,  picture  or  emotion  in  sustained  song 
and  within  the  frame  she  is  capable  of  much  va- 
riety of  expression. 

So,  too,  she  excels  in  the  songs  of  robust,  reso- 
[90] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

lute,  hearty,  homely  emotion  dear  to  German  com- 
posers and  German  audiences.  Such  a  song  is 
Brahms's  "The  Smith,"  her  beloved  encore  piece. 
Akin  is  Schumann's  "Ins  Freie,"  which  she  sings 
with  ringing  and  reiterated  declamatory  intensity. 
She  is  expert,  too,  in  the  lighter  vein  of  this  home- 
liness. Where  she  falls  short  on  the  side  of  im- 
agination and  expression  is  in  songs  that  are  half 
narrative,  half  characterization — and  to  add  a 
third  half,  Irish-wise — half  picture.  Her  tones 
are  not  as  graphic  as  they  might  be,  for  instance, 
in  Schumann's  song  of  the  girl  telling  her  whim- 
sical fortune  at  cards,  and  they  do  not  quite  bring 
the  moodiness  of  Liszt's  song  of  the  three  gypsies 
and  of  the  philosophizing  bystander.  She  accom- 
plishes such  pieces  with  perceiving  and  practised 
intelligence,  but  she  is  able  singer  achieving 
the  song,  and  not  as  she  sometimes  is,  the  per- 
fectly attuned  instrument  to  it. 

Yet,  whatever  Miss  Gerhardt's  details,  she  dif- 
ferentiates the  music  of  the  five  signal  composers 
of  German  song — Schumann,  Brahms,  Liszt, 
Strauss  and  Hugo  Wolf — and  so  makes  keen  pleas- 
ure in  the  concert  hall.  She  catches  the  rapturous 
glow  of  Schumann's  romantic  music  and  the  voice 
of  romance  is  in  his  songs  as  in  no  other.  She  does 
[91] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

her  best  to  make  Brahms  articulate  even  when  he 
pretends — a  sorry  business  for  his  mind  and  tem- 
perament— ^to  be  gypsy.  She  catches  the  nervous, 
erotic  ecstasies  of  Strauss;  the  straining  for  mood 
and  picture  and  the  subtle  emphases  of  Liszt.  Her 
Wolf  is  the  Wolf  who  is  the  master  song-writer  of 
our  time,  because  he  was  responsive  to  every  sort 
of  poetic  fancy,  no  matter  what  the  picture,  the 
mood  or  the  emotion;  because  he  could  make 
word  and  music  as  one;  because  he  raised  voice  and 
piano  to  equal  and  essential  part  in  the  song. 


[92] 


V.    For  Voice,  Hempel 

Frieda  Hempel's  hearers  have  equal  reason  to 
applaud  her  in  the  concert-hall  or  in  the  opera 
house.  At  last  she  is  as  gratefully  heard  in  a  re- 
cital of  songs  as  she  was  as  singer  of  lyric  music 
from  the  tentative  days  of  her  Violetta  in  "Trav- 
iata"  to  the  crowning  evening  of  her  finely  tem- 
pered and  rounded  Princess  in  "Der  Rosenkava- 
lier."  Slowly  she  has  learned  the  evasive  art  of 
program-making.  Once  and  again  in  the  past  her 
choice  of  pieces  has  been  irritation  to  her  more 
cultivated  and  exacting  hearers.  Now  she  compli- 
ments equally  the  taste  and  intelligence  of  singer 
and  listeners. 

The  quickest,  easiest,  the  most  salient  pleasure  of 
Miss  Hempel's  song  is  the  pleasure  of  a  voice  in 
its  golden  prime.  Elderly  singers  too  long  haunt 
the  stage  and  let  the  memories  of  their  better  days 
work  indulgence  for  them.  Younger  singers  come 
too  hastily  upon  it,  and  the  promise  of  their  fu- 
ture, if  only  they  will  take  the  time  and  spare  not 
with  the  toil,  persuades  the  listener  to  overlook  the 
[93] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

shortcomings  of  a  careless  eagerness  and  confi- 
dence. Singers  of  no  particular  age  let  "personal- 
ity," intelligence,  imagination  veil  vocal  limitations 
that,  removed,  would  make  the  other  qualities  shine 
only  the  brighter.  Vocally,  on  the  other  hand,  Miss 
Hempel  asks  no  indulgences,  proffers  no  excuses 
— and  needs  none.  Her  rich  soprano  tones  flow 
warmly,  in  full  body;  they  are  even  and  edgeless 
through  the  whole  range  of  a  voice  of  no  small  com- 
pass; they  are  supple  to  her  will  as  it  plays  upon 
the  contours,  the  contents,  the  colors  of  the  music; 
they  are  crystalline  in  depth  and  transparency; 
they  give  off  glowing  lusters. 

Miss  Hempel's  voice  unmistakably  recalls  Mme. 
Melba's  in  her  noon,  mistrustful  as  that  elder  gen- 
eration will  be  which  likes  to  believe  that  there 
can  be  no  younger  singers  like  the  singers  it  knew. 
Miss  Hempel's  tones  are  comparable  with  Mme. 
Melba's  in  union  of  lustrous  softness  with  clear 
brilliance,  of  sumptuous  body  with  exceeding 
agility,  of  lyric  sweetness  with  florid  sparkle,  in  a 
silvery  quality  that  captures  the  ear  while  it  evades 
words.  The  kinship  recurs,  again,  when  out  of 
stores  of  breath  and  with  wondrous  evenness.  Miss 
Hempel  sustains  her  upper  tones  through  the  long 
rapturous  phrases  of  the  melody  that  is  one  un- 
[94] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

broken  skyward  winging,  in  Handel's  air  from 
"Atalanta;"  when  the  ear  knows  not  whether  to 
admire  more  the  lyric  loveliness  of  the  middle 
and  purely  songful  strophe  of  "Casta  Diva"  or  the 
showering  fioriture  of  the  end;  when  a  "vocal 
waltz"  swirls  in  a  glittering  spray  of  the  ornaments 
of  song,  but  never  loses  rhythmic  flow  while  modu- 
lation becomes  as  playful  ripple.  Yet  not  even 
Mme.  Melba  herself  could  have  declaimed  the 
recitative  that  prefaces  "Casta  Diva"  with  such 
opulence  of  phrase  and  such  propulsive  power 
as  Miss  Hempel  gives  to  it  in  perfect  blend 
of  lyric  and  dramatic  singing.  Upon  trifles,  too, 
Miss  Hempel  not  only  bestows  the  glamors  of  her 
voice  but  also  the  instinct  of  the  comedienne  in 
tones.  In  Beethoven's  ditty  about  Chloe  and 
her  kiss.  Miss  Hempel  brings  such  archness  as 
Mme.  Sembrich  used  to  bring  to  light  lyrics  and 
that  Miss  Hempel  may  have  learned  in  her  studies 
with  that  mistress  of  song. 


[95] 


VI.    Destinn,  Violin-Like 

As  there  is  no  word  but  splendor  for  the  singing 
of  Mme.  Gulp  there  is  no  word  but  beauty  for  the 
singing  of  Emmy  Destinn  in  the  few  ripe  years 
before  she  withdrew  from  public  appearance. 
There  were  beauty  of  voice,  beauty  of  artistry, 
beauty  of  insight  and  impression,  beauty  even  in 
the  presence  of  the  singer  herself  aglow  with  the 
penetrating  and  quickening  charm  that  is  the  birth- 
right of  these  fine-fibred  Czech  women.  The 
happy  analogue  of  Miss  Destinn's  voice  in  song  is 
the  tone  that  Mr.  Kreisler  draws  from  the  violin. 
It  had  a  like  soft,  lustrous  and  finely  spun  texture; 
it  moved  in  a  delicately  vibrant  progress  from 
undulation  into  undulation ;  it  was  as  full  of  adroit 
and  iridescent  shadings;  it  had  the  same  soft  clear 
warmth  and  exquisite  sensibility;  it  was  con- 
trolled by  the  same  fine  artistry  penetrating  the 
hearer  imtil  it  transported  him  into  a  world  in 
which  there  is  naught  else  for  the  moment  but  the 
possessing  loveliness  of  sound. 

Of  like  beauty  was  the  artistry  of  Miss  Des- 
[96] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

tinn's  singing  when  the  ear  set  to  the  close  watch- 
ing and  the  mind  to  the  close  analyzing  of  it — all 
delicate  poise  and  intuitive  and  astute  finesse,  aU 
sure  and  bright  little  strokes  that  blended  like  the 
pointillage  of  an  impressionistic  picture  into  a 
perfectly  designed  and  illusory  whole.  And  this 
whole  was  the  pervasive  speech  of  the  music,  of 
the  personage  who  is  singing  it — if  the  piece 
happened  to  be  an  operatic  number — of  the  emo- 
tions in  play  over  it,  of  Miss  Destinn,  respon- 
sive and  enkindled  thereby  in  voice,  in  imagination, 
in  her  whole  embodying  and  transmitting  being. 

Recall  Miss  Destinn's  singing  of  the  air  of  the 
young  Salome  enamored  of  the  Baptist  in  Mas- 
senet's "Herodiade,"  and  the  recalling  is  to  hear 
anew  the  soft  and  insinuating  timbre  of  her  ca- 
ressing tones.  Hers  was  the  very  rustle  of  the 
sensual  impulses  that  Massenet  sought  in  his 
music.  Yet  the  sheer  beauty  of  the  singer's  tones 
and  feeling  idealized  them.  Recall,  again,  her 
singing  of  her  native  music,  from  Dvorak,  in  par- 
ticular. Out  of  it  rose  the  penetrating  and  haunt- 
ing beauty,  the  native  wildness  and  wistfulness, 
the  whole  exotic  color  of  Czech  song.  Again,  the 
analogue  is  Mr.  Kreisler.  For  it  is  his  crowning 
virtue,  as  it  was  Miss  Destinn's,  to  make  the  ab- 

[97] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

stract  beauty  of  musical  sound  and  of  the  artistry 
that  guides  and  controls  it  become  the  concrete 
beauty  of  a  particular  mood,  emotion  and  image. 
And  so  doing  they  put  the  finest  command  of  musi- 
cal means  and  ends  at  the  service  of  as  fine  a 
poetizing  and  emotionalizing  sensibility.  The 
blending  is  beauty  also. 


[98] 


VII.    Teyte  via  Paris 

Maggie  Teyte  came  to  America  with  one  of  the 
"testimonials"  that  Debussy  used  occasionally  to 
emit,  to  sing  his  songs  and  the  songs  of  other  con- 
temporary French  composers.  She  had  dwelt  in 
Paris  in  the  inmost  circles  of  the  "new  school"  and 
was  said  there  to  have  imbibed  the  "only  true  and 
authentic"  versions  of  its  songs.  Then,  and  since 
then,  no  one  has  sung  them  so  well  or  so  charac- 
teristically. Her  voice  is  a  rather  singular  one,  a 
distinctly  French  voice,  English-bom  though  she 
is.  There  is  a  faint  nasal  quality  in  it,  a  hint  of 
dryness  akin  to  that  which  makes  most  French 
tenors  sing  like  sublimated  baritones.  Sometimes, 
too,  a  tone  in  it  has  a  very  fine  but  still  perceptible 
edge.  It  is  a  very  bright  voice  that  has  been  pol- 
ished into  a  kind  of  dry  clearness.  It  does  lack 
richness;  it  does  lack  sensuous  warmth.  It  falls 
on  the  ear  much  as  the  light  of  a  very  clear,  dry, 
cool,  still  autumn  day  falls  on  the  eye.  There  are 
glints  in  Miss  Teyte's  tones;  they  are  transparent, 
prismatic,  catching  many  reflections  from  the  music 
[99] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

and  the  mood  of  the  songs  that  she  sings.  Italians 
would  not  like  her  voice;  they  would  say  it  lacked 
sensuous  richness.  The  English  would  believe  they 
ought  to  like  it,  because  it  is  a  voice  for  connois- 
seurs. The  French  warm  to  it — because  it  is  so 
French  a  voice  in  all  its  distinctive  traits.  We 
Americans  may  take  it  as  individuals.  Perhaps  it 
is  fairest  to  say  that  the  mind  as  well  as  the  ear 
appreciates  it — ^the  instrument  is  so  polished,  so 
limpid,  so  serviceable  to  its  purpose. 

Miss  Teyte  can  run  the  Debussyan  gamut.  For 
the  first  time  we  in  America  heard  Debussy  hu- 
morous— in  the  song  of  the  bourgeoisie  and  their 
Sunday  "excursions."  For  the  first  time,  too,  we 
heard  Debussy  half-sensual,  half-melancholy  in 
the  song  of  Bilitis's  tresses.  Besides  there  was  De- 
bussy playful  and  mocking,  in  the  song  of  the 
puppets;  ghostly  again  in  the  phantoms  of  the 
moonlight;  finding  in  the  sea  and  its  colors  and 
sounds  strange  images  of  stuffs  and  their  hues  and 
rustlings;  Debussy  languorously  ecstatic,  De- 
bussy bitter-sweet;  and  always  Debussy  subduing 
the  images  of  lights  and  sounds  and  colors  to  the 
melancholy  they  stirred  in  the  soul  they  touched. 
Therein  is  the  poetic  formula  of  the  new  French 
song.  It  is  as  characteristic  and  sometimes  as  arbi- 
[100] 


SINGERS    OF   SONGS 

trary  as  the  harmonies.  Usually  Miss  Teyte's 
transparent  tones  are  full  of  the  reflections  of  all 
these  images.  Sometimes  a  single  phrase  in  them 
makes  an  emotion,  a  fancy,  glint.  It  is  altogether 
sensitive,  polished  and  calculating  singing.  It 
etches  out  Debussy's  songs.  Yet  some  of  us  may 
like  them  better  when  they  are  as  vague  as  a  Monet 
or  as  richly  sensuous  of  color  as  a  Renoir. 


[101] 


VIII.    Gauthier  the  Pioneer 

To  the  living  composers  of  song,  after  Debussy, 
Eva  Gauthier  gives  voice.  Her  artistry,  like  the 
artistry  of  Miss  Teyte,  although  it  achieves  differ- 
ent ends,  is  the  artistry  of  sophistication.  As  sig- 
nal interpreter  of  the  modems  and  ultra-modems 
she  is  to  song  what  Miss  Garden  is  to  opera.  She 
is  mistress  of  tonal  imagery  and  tonal  illusion. 

An  audience  which  assembles  to  hear  Miss 
Gauthier  is  a  pleasure  in  itself.  It  usually  wears 
bright  clothes,  for  it  is  a  cheerful  company  come 
for  pleasure  and  not  from  a  sense  of  duty  or  in 
semi-boredom.  It  includes  many  young  listeners, 
come  to  hear  and  to  applaud  youth.  The  singer 
herself  usually  meets  more  than  halfway  the  mood 
of  the  audience.  Her  gown  shines  with  color, 
while  a  touch  of  fantasy  has  shaped  it.  She  dif- 
fuses a  hint  of  the  exotic,  as  though  face  and  hair 
had  caught  lasting  imprint  of  her  Javanese  days. 
She  also  comes  eagerly,  alertly,  to  her  task  and  is 
quick  to  reciprocate  the  pleasure  of  her  audience. 
[102] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

Hers  is  the  thoroughbred  instinct  to  be  always 
doing  her  best. 

To  this  personal  quality,  which  is  not  exactly 
the  routine  of  the  concert-hall,  Miss  Gauthier  may 
owe  her  audiences.  Yet  her  choice  of  pieces,  her 
unique  place  among  present  singers  in  America, 
help  to  swell  them.  Usually  her  programs  are 
plentiful  in  music  of  this  immediate  day.  For  her, 
indeed,  none  of  it  may  be  too  venturesome  or  too 
baffling.  With  it  she  oftens  fills  an  entire  concert, 
letting  the  new  men,  the  bold  men,  of  France, 
Italy,  England,  Germany  and  America,  wreak  for 
two  hours  what  detractors  call  their  wicked  or  their 
foolish  way.  She  sings  fantastical  songs  out  of 
Stravinsky;  ironic  pieces  out  of  the  Parisians, 
Ravel  and  Satie;  the  newest  numbers  of  Malipiero 
and  Casella,  the  "advanced"  Italians — in  fine,  a 
wholly  exceptional  and  altogether  singular  music 
to  be  heard  in  America  from  no  one  else  in  such 
understanding  and  sympathy.  She  summons  and 
sustains  the  atmosphere  in  which  each  song  has  its 
being  and  out  of  herself  animates,  intensifies  and 
colors  it.  At  her  command  is  the  mood,  the  pas- 
sion, the  picture  of  every  song;  while,  again  out 
of  herself  she  shades,  warms  and  deepens  them. 
Into  her  singing  passes  every  inflection,  every  sug- 
[103] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

gestion  of  the  composer,  be  it  a  golden  image  of 
Duparc,  a  sensuous  tremor  of  Debussy,  an  ironic 
stroke  of  Ravel.  Often  she  matches  subtlety  for 
subtlety,  producing  the  "sounds"  of  the  new  music, 
achieving  no  less  its  direct,  pungent,  instant  im- 
pression, its  brevities,  its  recurring  harshness, 
its  smart  and  smack.  And  throughout  this 
multifold  accent  and  coloring  her  voice  keeps  often 
to  the  beauty  and  obeys  not  a  few  of  the  prescrip- 
tions of  pure  song.  So  in  her  and  for  a  pleasure 
that  set  her  hearers  aglow,  two  artistries  join  hands. 


[104] 


IX.    Schumann-Heink  and  Service 

When  a  singer  stands  at  maturity  the  passing 
years  do  not  ripen  the  voice,  but  they  do  refine  and 
deepen  artistry.  Not  so  many  years  ago  Mme. 
Schumann-Heink's  singing  was  large  outpouring 
of  floods  of  rich  tone,  broadly  colored  with  ele- 
mentary moods  and  impulses,  direct  in  its  musical 
and  emotional  appeal,  conquering  by  the  intensity 
of  its  power  and  the  opulence  of  its  beauty.  The 
voice  as  mere  voice  has  now  lost  something  of  its 
tonal  magnificence.  For  bursts  of  tone  she  now 
substitutes  adroit  light  and  shade  in  the  coloring 
of  it.  Great  sweeps  of  power  give  way  to  a  quieter, 
deeper,  more  sustained  beauty.  To  the  impulses 
of  a  big  and  warm  temperament  succeed  the  finer 
strokes  of  thoughtful  and  ripened  imagination. 

Mme.  Schumann-Heink  still  keeps  the  human- 
ness  of  aspect  and  voice,  mood  and  emotion,  the 
suggestion  of  the  common  lot  glorified  and  en- 
nobled in  her,  that  make  her  the  most  sympathetic 
and  the  most  democratic  singer  of  these  days  in 
America.  The  common  people — ^to  use  a  con- 
[105] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

venient  but  not  a  deprecatory  phrase — rejoice  in 
her.  She  stirs  them  because  her  singing  expresses 
in  terms  that  they  can  feel  and  understand,  moods 
and  emotions  that  are  half -inarticulate  in  them,  and 
because  it  awakens  spontaneously  their  half -dor- 
mant sense  of  beautiful  and  moving  song.  At  the 
same  time,  the  voice  and  the  artistry  that  she  plies 
upon  it  are  the  pleasure  of  the  sophisticated  and  the 
sensitive.  In  her  time,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, she  has  done  great  service  to  the  broader 
understanding  and  appreciation  of  the  art  of  song 
in  America.  She  has  spread  broadcast  its  satis- 
factions and  pleasures,  opened  them  to  a  great  half- 
deaf  and  half -dumb  world  that  scarcely  guessed 
them. 

Those  that  still  crave  the  old  Schumann-Heink 
of  the  big  sweep  may  still  have  it  when  she  chooses 
to  place  on  her  programs  fragments  from  the 
operas  of  her  prime,  her  somewhat  melodramatic 
version  of  "The  Erl-King"  or,  less  deservingly,  the 
plaint  of  Rachel  crying  with  the  voice  of  distraught 
motherhood  for  her  children.  Yet  even  they  must 
feel  what  a  far  finer  thing  is  the  rich,  warm,  vel- 
vety beauty  of  her  sustained  song,  falling  on  the 
ear  like  the  pile  of  a  thick,  soft  carpet  to  the  naked 
foot;  the  depths  of  subdued  yet  glowing  color  that 
[106] 


SINGERS   OF   SONGS 

she  may  still  give  it — colors  like  those  in  Venetian 
pictures;  and  the  imagination  that  catches  and 
weaves  each  phrase  into  the  spirit  of  the  whole. 
Once  Mme.  Schumann-Heink  sang  with  a  careless 
opulence  of  power.  Now  when  she  chooses,  she 
sings  with  a  discriminating  artistry,  and  so  gilds 
and  glamors  her  song.  At  twilight,  in  her  still 
ripens  the  triple  resource  of  the  great  singer — 
voice,  artistry  and  life. 


[107] 


IV 
PIANISTS 


I.    Paderewski — Poetry  and  Power 

WHAT  was  it  that  differentiated  Paderew- 
ski from  the  other  pianists  of  a  past  and 
an  immediate  generation?  When  he 
was  minded  to  exercise  all  his  powers  that  the 
music  in  hand  asked  and  when  they  answered 
readily  to  his  call,  he  was  distinctly  different  from 
his  fellows,  however  eminent.  The  contrast  de- 
pended only  slightly  upon  external  circumstance. 
It  did  not  lie  in  the  fact  that  Paderewski  pre- 
ferred that  the  lights  be  lowered  while  he  was  play- 
ing and  so,  as  some  like  to  believe,  clothed  music 
and  performance  in  atmosphere — if  only  it  would 
come  by  so  easy  a  trick! — whereas  Mr.  Bauer  or 
Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  sit  at  the  piano  in  full  day. 
It  did  not  come  from  the  fact  that  Paderewski  is 
a  man  of  courtly  and  somewhat  old-fashioned  man- 
ners and  of  like  individual  habit  in  his  dress 
whereas  Mr.  Hofmann  or  Mr.  Godowsky  is  as 
routine  toward  his  audience  as  he  is  to  the  eye. 
It  did  not  even  proceed  from  the  fact,  commonly 
said  to  indicate  a  greatness  apart,  that  Paderewski 

[111] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

could  be  as  inconsiderate  toward  his  hearers — say 
in  promptness  and  in  the  temperature  of  the  con- 
cert-room— as  he  was  courteous  to  them  in  other 
things.  Only  in  relatively  little  did  it  spring  from 
the  fact  that  he  was  and  is  interesting  and  impres- 
sive to  see,  whereas  nearly  all  the  pianists  of  the 
first  rank  in  this  day  seem  to  the  sight  but  ordinary 
men  of  an  ordinary  world,  busy  with  the  practice 
of  their  profession. 

It  is  an  old  surmise  and  probably  a  true  one 
that  many  have  gone  to  hear  Paderewski  to  whom 
music  is  an  unpleasant  noise  and  a  piano  only  a 
keyed  and  wired  box  that  makes  it.  The  presump- 
tion is  that  they  sought  the  concert  because  they 
had  reason  to  believe  that  Paderewski  was  an  un- 
usual and  impressive  personality  and  that  they 
stayed  to  the  end  because  on  that  score  he  inter- 
ested and  stimulated  them.  Mr.  Bauer,  Mr.  Ga- 
brilowitsch,  even  Mr.  Busoni,  do  not  seize  the  eye 
of  the  body  and  the  eye  of  the  imagination  when 
they  cross  the  stage  to  the  piano  or  hold  them  fast, 
while  they  are  playing.  Paderewski  did.  In  the 
tall,  spare  and  slightly  bent  figure;  in  the  leonine 
and  aureoled  head;  in  the  deep-set  eyes;  in  the 
powerful  yet  sensitive  hands;  in  the  air  of  quiet 
concentration  and  courteous  detachment  there  was 
[112] 


PIANISTS 

that  which  suggested  an  unusual  and  an  impressive 
personality.  As  Paderewski  played — no  matter 
through  what  range  of  pieces  and  no  matter  whether 
he  was  at  his  fullest  and  highest  or  a  degree  or  two 
below  them — the  impression  deepened  and,  before 
the  concert  was  done,  the  listener,  even  if  he  was 
none  too  quick-minded,  felt  that  he  was  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  great  and  a  unique  figure.  He  may  not 
have  known  that  Paderewski  was  and  is  scholarly 
and  lettered,  a  man  of  many  interests  in  and 
out  of  the  arts,  a  man  of  the  world  in  any  com- 
pany however  disposed;  and  even  a  man  of  busi- 
ness of  appreciable  acumen.  He  may  never  have 
surmised  that  the  pianist  was  so  manifold  that  he 
would  have  risen  high  in  almost  any  other  calling, 
as  indeed  he  did  through  his  late  excursions 
into  European  diplomacy  and  Polish  politics. 
But  that  same  listener  unmistakably  felt  the  per- 
sonal quality  and  force  of  the  man.  None  other 
of  the  pianists  of  the  day  yields  such  sensation. 
To  the  eyes  and  the  sensibilities  of  their  hearers 
they  are  only  uncommonly  able  and  interesting 
practitioners  of  an  art. 

Therein,  at  bottom,  the  difference  lies,  when  the 
practiced  and   discriminating  listener  scrutinizes 
the  qualities  of  Paderewski  as  pianist  and  musi- 
[113] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

cian.  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  plays  Schumann's 
"Cameval"  and  his  listeners  hear  with  pleasure  the 
graphic,  fanciful  and  often  poetized  panorama  in 
tones  that  he  unrolls  before  them.  Mr.  Busoni  has 
made  Bach's  music  magnificently  eloquent  of  sub- 
stance, form  and  creative  passion.  Mr.  Hofmann 
penetrates  Beethoven's  later  sonatas  with  lucid  in- 
sight and  deep  understanding;  he  imparts  them 
with  grave  power.  In  twenty  pieces,  it  is  possible 
to  recall  the  perceiving  imagination  and  the  im- 
parting ardor  with  which  Harold  Bauer  renews 
their  beauty  and  reanimates  their  force,  and  so  on- 
ward with  one  and  another  pianist  of  the  first 
rank.  Hearing,  the  listener  admires  the  wealth, 
the  plasticity  and  the  readiness  of  technical  re- 
source and  verve  that  they  bring  to  the  music; 
their  clear  mental,  emotional  and  spiritual  re- 
sponse to  it;  the  diverse  eloquence  with  which  they 
impart  matter  and  manner,  mood  and  suggestion; 
their  sense  of  style;  their  feeling  for  color;  their 
poetizing  impulses;  their  play  of  answering  emo- 
tion, and  so  forth  with  a  score  of  admirable  and 
exalted  attributes.  But  always  on  the  stage  is 
the  virtuoso  and  in  the  auditorium  the  hearer,  each 
discharging  his  due  function. 

Relatively  seldom  does  any  one  of  these  illus" 
[114] 


PIANISTS 

trious  pianists  transport  his  audience — ^lifting  it 
out  of  itself,  making  it  imaware  of  means  and  un- 
conscious of  process,  flooding  it  with  the  music  that 
he  is  playing  and  with  the  power  of  his  own  pro- 
jecting and  suffusing  personality,  immersing  it  in 
the  single  and  overmastering  sensation  of  the 
beauty,  the  passion  and  the  poetry  of  sound  that 
imagination  and  exaltation  have  made  music. 
Often,  when  he  was  in  full  possession  of  every 
faculty  and  deeply  stirred  by  his  music  Paderewski 
could  so  transport  his  audience.  To  do  so  is  the 
achievement  of  a  unique,  manifold,  almost  epical 
power.  For  a  while  this  power  seemed  to  wane 
in  the  concert-hall  because  for  the  time  he  chose 
to  divert  it  to  the  study-table.  There  he  sought  to 
compose  music — piano  pieces  in  the  larger  forms, 
a  symphony,  an  opera — even  as  he  played  it.  The 
attempt  and  the  outcome  must  have  disclosed  to  his 
clear  mind,  as  it  did  to  many  another  not  so  clear, 
that  only  in  the  interpreting  and  the  imparting  of 
the  music  of  other  men  could  he  fully  release  him- 
self and  sweep  his  hearers  into  the  world  of  tonal 
passion  and  poetry,  tonal  vision  and  tonal  pageant, 
that  seemed  to  surge  upon  his  imagination.  He 
returned  again  to  the  concert-hall  after  this  experi- 
ment and  could  still  use  that  imagination  undimin- 
[115] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

ished,  even  heightened,  with  like  transporting  out- 
come. 

But  Paderewski  was  much  more  than  a  pianist 
clothed  with  power  and  passion.  For  another  of 
the  distinctions  that  to  the  day  of  his  retirement 
set  him  apart  from  other  pianists,  was  the  range 
and  evenness  of  his  technical  and  interpretative, 
his  pianistic,  his  musical  and  his  poetizing  facul- 
ties. There  is  reason  to  praise  Mr.  Busoni  for  his 
mastery  of  technical  intricacies  and  his  grave  elo- 
quence; Mr.  Hofmann  for  his  loveliness  and 
variety  of  tonal  color,  for  his  lucidity,  for  his 
manly  continence;  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  for  an  ex- 
ceeding beauty  of  touch  and  tone  and  for  a  tem- 
perament that  knows  both  power  and  charm;  Mr. 
Bauer  for  a  rare  limpidity  and  surety  of  technical 
means  and  for  a  finely  discriminating  sense  of 
styles.  And  so  on  through  the  list.  In  contrast 
Paderewski  assembled  in  himself  and  exercised 
of  himself — in  greater  or  less  but  always  in  high 
degree — ^nearly  all  the  resources  and  all  the  quali- 
ties of  an  Olympian  pianist. 


[116] 


II.    Gabrilowitsch  and  Bauer — Compeers 

Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  and  Mr.  Bauer  are  musicians 
before  they  are  virtuosi.  As  pianists  they  would 
both  cultivate  their  calling  in  all  its  range.  Even 
in  these  days  when  each  is  in  the  fullness  of  his 
power  and  vogue,  they  are  as  ready  as  ever  to  bear 
their  parts  in  chamber-music,  to  play  concertos  in 
which  the  piano  is  hardly  more  than  an  instrument 
added  to  the  orchestra.  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  will 
even  divide  his  energies  as  established  conductor 
of  the  Detroit  Symphony  Orchestra  and  as  occa- 
sional pianist  in  recitals  of  his  own.  It  is  easy  to 
associate  their  playing.  It  is  an  old  story  that 
in  both  of  them  mind  and  feeling  as  they  play 
upon  music  are  as  wide  and  supple  in  range  as  they 
are  even  and  poised  in  application.  They  are  the 
''intimate"  pianists,  as  the  youngsters  like  to  say, 
who  bid  sympathetic  hearers  to  their  confidence. 

Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  came  first  to  America  an  in- 
teresting and  expert  pianist.  He  has  now  become 
a  distinguished  pianist  in  the  ripeness  of  maturity. 
The  sonorous,  sweeping,  declamatory  Gabrilo- 
[117] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

witsch  of  Tschaikovsky's  concerto  is  almost  at  an- 
other pole  from  the  Gabrilowitsch  gently  weaving 
Mozart's  elegant  arabesques,  singing  with  Schu- 
bert's free-voiced  music  or  meditative  over  the 
pieces  of  Brahms's  twilight  years.  When  a 
pianist  can  so  differentiate  his  playing,  there  is  no 
doubting  his  technical  artistry;  when  he  is  so  sen- 
sitive to  the  particular  quality  of  his  several  pieces, 
there  is  no  mistrusting  his  response  to  the  emotion 
and  the  poetry  of  music ;  and  when  he  accomplishes 
this  discrimination  as  justly  as  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch, 
there  is  no  mistaking  the  poise  and  controlling  in- 
telligence behind.  Thus  does  he  stand  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  three  attributes  of  a  pianist  in  the 
high,  full  sense  of  the  word — ^mental  grasp  of  his 
music  and  mental  control  of  his  playing,  suscepti- 
bility to  the  peculiar  beauty  and  the  particular 
emotion  or  mood  of  his  pieces,  and  the  executive 
ability  to  bring  his  understanding  of  them  and  his 
feeling  for  them  to  clear  and  persuasive  expres- 
sion. 

In  the  concert-room  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch,  in  him- 
self, lacks  the  immediate  appeal  of  an  unusual  per- 
sonality. He  escapes,  indeed,  the  pedagogic  air  of 
Mr.  Bauer,  the  businesslike  routine  of  Mr.  Hof- 
mann  or  the  somnolent  heaviness  of  Mr.  Lhevinne. 
[118] 


PIANISTS 

He  lacks  equally  the  quick  sense  of  alert  power 
that  sprang  from  Mme.  Carreno,  for  example,  as 
she  crossed  the  stage  to  the  piano;  the  impression 
of  an  uncanny  and  impish  personality  that  de 
Pachmann  bore  through  the  very  door  of  the  ante- 
room, or  the  suggestion  of  mingled  remoteness  and 
power  that  was  in  Paderewski's  presence.  When 
Mr.  Gabrilowitsch  has  gone  half  his  way  through  a 
recital,  it  is  easy  to  find  in  his  bearing  the  poise, 
the  tensity,  the  alertness,  the  token  of  a  finely-tem- 
pered mind  and  spirit  that  are  in  his  playing. 
He  looks  his  absorption  in  it,  he  suggests  his  elas- 
tic control  of  himself  and  all  that  he  would  do. 
The  sense  of  personality,  however,  is  neither  upper- 
most in  the  hearer  as  it  was  with  de  Pachmann  nor 
electric  and  almost  compulsory  as  it  was  with 
Paderewski.  A  departing  audience  recalls  Mr. 
Gabrilowitsch  the  man  less  than  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch 
the  pianist.  Advance  as  he  may,  he  is  never  likely 
to  have  the  reward — perhaps  experience  is  the 
truer  word — of  clamorous  women  close  packed 
about  his  platform.  Yet  he  will  leave  his  listeners 
as  he  leaves  them  now,  with  haunting  memories  of 
his  playing.  He  stirs,  and,  in  all  probability,  will 
stir  to  the  end,  not  to  loud  enthusiasm,  but  to  intent 
and  intimate  admiration. 

[119] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

It  is  within  the  truth  to  call  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch 
and  Mr.  Bauer  objective  pianists,  to  say,  even,  that 
they  have  gone  to  extremes  in  self-subjection.  It 
were  fairer  and  truer  to  call  them  poised  pianists. 
No  one  who  has  heard  them  often  and  widely 
can  doubt  either  the  large  amplitude  or  the  nervous 
vigor  of  their  power  when  the  music  demands  it. 
Deliberate  and  polished  as  they  can  be,  they  can 
be  equally  free  and  spontaneous.  The  truth  is 
that  being  no  virtuosi  with  a  technique  and  a  tem- 
perament and  little  else,  but  men  of  fine  mind 
and  practiced  intelligence,  they  discriminate  with 
their  music.  They  find  as  nearly  as  they  can  the 
particidar  characteristics  of  each  piece,  and  set 
themselves  to  the  imparting.  To  the  end  they  are 
likely  to  remain  the  intimate  pianists,  seeming,  in- 
deed, oftenest  to  be  playing  to  themselves,  while 
by  some  happy  chance  their  audience  has  been  ad- 
mitted to  hear,  and  they  are  hardly  aware  of  its 
presence. 

Mr.  Gabrilowitsch,  in  particular,  is  plainly  con- 
scious, thoughtful  even,  of  the  ends  that  he  would 
gain,  but  these  ends  are  the  perfect  impartment  of 
the  music  in  its  kind,  and  not  the  glory  of  Ossip 
Gabrilowitsch  or  the  answering  excitement  of  the 
audience.  He  may  or  may  not  have  stirred  or 
[120] 


PIANISTS 

pleased  it,  but  once  more  he  has  brought  the  music 
to  life — ^the  daily  re-creation  which  is  the  marvel 
of  the  pianist's  or  the  violinist's  existence — as  it 
lives  in  him. 

Mr.  Bauer's  studious  mind  searches  deeply, 
minutely,  persistently  into  each  composer  whose 
music  he  plays,  into  each  piece  that  he  finally  har- 
vests for  performance  in  public.  He  likes  to  turn 
aside  from  the  beaten  track  and  out  of  the  byways 
fetch  an  overlooked  or  a  semi-archaic  piece.  His 
inquiring  mind  will  not  let  him  believe  that  the 
"standard  repertory"  contains  all  things  that  a 
pianist  should  play  or  that  a  properly  curious  au- 
dience cares  to  hear.  Having  so  chosen  his  music, 
strange  or  familiar,  he  bestows  upon  it  a  mind 
that  assorts,  defines  and  rounds,  a  temperament  as 
clear  and  just,  technical  resource  that  gains  his 
every  purpose.  With  Mr.  Bauer,  from  the  abstruse 
concertos  o|  Brahms  to  the  evanescent  fancies  of 
Debussy,  the  listener  hears  the  music  integral  and 
illuminated,  of,  by  and  for  itself. 


[121] 


III.    Rakhmaninov  the  Puritan 

Like  Paderewski,  but  in  less  degree,  Mr.  Rakh- 
maninov is  possessed  of  a  personality  which  ar- 
rests his  audience — an  audience,  too,  which  in 
diversity  sometimes  recalls  his  predecessor.  But 
to  this  audience  Mr.  Rakhmaninov  plays  in  his 
own  fashion.  He  does  not  caress  his  hearers  with 
an  insinuating  beauty,  an  illuding  glamour  of  tone ; 
rather,  at  moments  his  touch  is  appreciably  me- 
tallic, a  little  thin,  perilously  brittle.  No  more 
does  he  invariably  persuade  his  hearers  that  the 
piano  is  an  instrument  of  unfolding  song.  Quite  as 
often  with  him  it  is  an  instrument  that  parts  phrase 
from  phrase,  even  note  from  note.  As  little,  is 
Mr.  Rakhmaninov  displayful  technician.  True, 
there  is  hardly  a  pianistic  feat  of  strength  or 
agility  (to  use  the  phrase  of  the  circus  posters) 
that  he  cannot  accomplish  easily.  But  he  does  each 
and  all  of  these  feats  as  though  they  were  the 
merest  convolutions  of  the  music,  or  decorations 
upon  it.     They  are;  therefore  why  stress  them? 

No  more  is  Mr.  Rakhmaninov  the  poetizing 
[122] 


PIANISTS 

pianist,  transmuting  each  piece  with  his  own  awak- 
ened imagination,  like  Paderewski.  He  has  per- 
sonality and  to  spare;  but  he  is  not  a  very  "per- 
sonal" pianist.  He  is  all  for  the  music  in  hand, 
to  release  and  enhance  the  composer's  design — and 
not  the  pianist's.  Evenly  and  exactly,  coolly  and 
detachedly,  he  does  what  the  composer  bids. 
Flawless  master  of  every  technical  device,  this 
prowess  never  labors,  never  intrudes  itself.  It  ac- 
complishes all  things  technical  for  what  they  are 
— precisely.  The  voice  of  this  prowess  is  a  tone 
as  clear — and  often  as  cool — as  a  crystal.  It  is  a 
transparent  mirror  of  the  music  to  the  uttermost 
detail;  it  reflects  as  completely  and  lucidly  the 
mood  in  which  the  pianist  is  imparting  it.  At  his 
will  and  hands,  this  tone  runs  a  gamut  of  grada- 
tions as  exact  as  they  are  endless.  It  moves  in 
masses  and  it  moves  in  filaments;  it  gathers  force 
and  it  droops  to  whisper.  Chameleon-like,  it  as- 
sumes on  the  instant  whatever  color  the  pianist 
would  impose.  Like  the  technical  prowess,  this 
touch  and  tone  is  Mr.  Rakhmaninov's  precise, 
poised  and  perfect  medium.  In  both,  mind  and 
hand,  continence  and  cultivation  are  in  impeccable 
mingling.  A  Puritan  comes  among  pianists. 
[123] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

By  these  means  Mr.  Rakhmaninov  sets  forth  the 
design,  the  course,  the  structure  of  the  music  in 
hand.  He  misses  neither  the  large  lines  nor  the 
interwoven  detail;  no  modulation,  no  ornament  may- 
escape  his  clear  eyes,  his  adjusting  fingers.  The 
songful  unfolding  of  a  melody,  the  play  and  inter- 
play of  motives  or  fragments  of  motives,  the  beat 
of  rhythm  changeful  or  sustained,  the  tonal  prog- 
ress, however  intricate,  the  tonal  design  however 
obscure,  contrast,  climax,  the  levels  and  the  slopes 
between — not  so  much  as  one  evades  him.  Revela- 
tion of  the  form,  the  substance,  the  purely  tonal 
content  of  the  composer's  measure,  is  as  precise, 
flawless,  complete  as  the  other  virtues. 

Yet  composers  also  infuse  into  their  music  pic- 
ture, poetry,  passion,  fervors,  fantasy — all  the 
works — at  their  will  and  mood — of  the  imagina- 
tion, flickering  inward  or  quivering  outward. 
Thoughtfully,  assiduously,  exactly,  Mr.  Rakhman- 
inov photographs  these  things  upon  the  sensitive 
plate  of  his  mind.  In  like  manner  his  touch  and 
tone  convey  the  picture,  as  the  print  is  to  the  nega- 
tive. He  "interprets"  (as  the  word  goes)  with 
every  virtue  of  musical  photography;  but  with  such 
photography  he  is  done.  The  portrait,  the  land- 
scape, the  fresco,  the  miniature,  fused  and  heated 
[124] 


PIANISTS 

with  the  blended  imaginations  and  individualities 
of  composer  and  interpreter,  he  cannot  and  he  will 
not  paint.  Again  the  Puritan  of  pianists  by  Puri- 
tans applauded. 


[125] 


rV.  The  Gamut  of  Tone — Hofmann 

Josef  Hofmann  matured  late,  but  he  matured 
magnificently.  In  him  now  are  all  the  qualities 
of  a  great  pianist  as  they  have  not  mingled  in  any 
single  man  since  the  golden  prime  of  Paderewski. 
He  is  not  a  "personality"  in  the  concert-hall;  he  is 
even  a  prosaic  figure  there.  But  he  happens  to  be 
a  great  musician  and  a  very  great  pianist,  and  by 
these  two  attributes  he  can  hold  the  interest  of  his 
hearers,  however  miscellaneous  his  audience,  re- 
sponsive to  the  end  of  a  recital.  No  longer,  in  his 
present  estate,  can  he  be  called  the  "pianists' 
pianist."  If  once  he  was  austere,  exact,  he  has 
now  waxed  with  emotional,  imaginative,  character- 
izing, dramatizing  power.  And  more,  he  has  in- 
fused into  his  playing  a  new  sense  of  beauty ;  while 
out  of  it,  at  due  moments,  springs  the  quality  that 
he  has  hitherto  lacked — poetic  charm. 

The  glory  of  Mr.  Hofmann,  as  of  Mr.  Kreisler, 
is  his  wealth  and  individuality  of  tone  animating 
and  transfiguring  the  music  he  plays.  No  pianist 
of  our  time  summons  a  tone  so  lustrous  as  that  of 
Mr.  Hofmann,  so  like  a  crystal  through  which  flow 
[126] 


PIANISTS 

a  hundred  tints  and  shadings  of  tint.  Sensitiveness 
to  color  and  luminosity  are  its  twofold  distinctions. 
It  can  be  richly  clangorous  as  at  moments  in 
Schumann's  Fantasia  or  in  Liszt's  Rhapsodies.  It 
can  be  so  fleet,  light,  elastic  and  glinting  that  the 
stars  shall  seem  to  dance  in  it  through  the 
Waltzes  of  Chopin.  It  can  be  also  an  ex^juisitely 
soft  and  limpid  tone — a  tone  that  distills  phrases 
out  of  the  air  into  beauty — as  with  Schu- 
mann's "Bird  as  Prophet."  It  can  spin  threads 
of  arabesques  as  though  they  were  interlacing 
filaments  of  color  weaving  themselves  around  the 
song  that  it  also  is  bearing  to  as  many-hued  beauty. 
Mr. .  Hof mann's  tone  is  like  the  voice  of  a  superla- 
tive singer  in  the  sensuous  beauty  that  it  evokes 
from  the  instrument  that,  as  some  say,  is  least 
dowered  with  it.  Therein  is  his  power — and  to 
much  greater  degree  than  when  he  elects  to  make 
the  piano  sonorous — and  therein  is  the  play  of  his 
imagination  and  feeling.  The  sensations  that  his 
music  awakes  in  him  are  the  sensations  of  the 
range,  the  beauty  and  the  power  of  tones.  Grave 
as  he  is,  "mental"  as  he  is,  he  plays  to  the  senses 
of  those  that  hear. 


[127] 


V.    BusoNi  FOR  Bach 

In  Europe,  Mr.  Busoni  is  composer,  manifold 
musician,  teacher  of  and  theorist  about  music. 
To  us  in  America,  he  continues  a  wandering 
and  unique  virtuoso.  The  more  the  pity,  since  he 
is  a  highly  individualized,  variously  interesting 
and  altogether  remarkable  figure  in  the  music  of 
our  time.  There  was  not,  and  is  not,  one  that 
matches  him  in  the  music  of  Bach,  whether  he 
plays  it  as  the  composer  put  it  on  paper  or  in  his 
own  transcriptions,  giving  to  its  substance  and 
spirit  the  richer  resource  of  modem  tonal  speech. 
Many  a  pianist  sets  them  on  his  programs  and  plays 
them  after  his  kind;  but  there  is  none  that  plays 
them  as  does  Busoni  himself. 

Mr.  Busoni,  in  his  American  days,  was  not  of 
romantic  mind  and  temper  and,  wisely  enough,  he 
was  chary  of  the  music  of  Chopin.  He  might 
well  also  have  put  aside  the  piano-pieces  of 
Schumann  and  Schubert.  He  seemed  to  play  such 
numbers  with  sheer  power  of  mental  grasp  upon 
them  rather  than  with  imagination  and  intuition. 
Music  of  large  and  deep  matter  stirred  him  but 
[128] 


PIANISTS 

the  intimate  music  of  fleeting  fancies  and  poetized 
and  visionary  musings  more  evaded  him.  For  him 
the  large  and  lofty  utterance. 

But  the  very  qualities  of  mind  and  temperament 
that  parted  him  from  Schumann  and  Chopin 
brought  him  close  to  Bach's  preludes  and  fugues 
and  to  the  later  sonatas  of  Beethoven.  He  played 
the  preludes  in  sonorities  that  even  upon  the  piano 
were  organ-like  in  their  depth  and  richness.  The 
music  advanced  in  majestic  clangors;  each  phrase 
had  its  just  emphasis;  the  whole  moved  with  might 
and. majesty.  It  was  truly  of  the  rare  and  usually 
impossible  grandeurs  of  the  piano.  The  fugues  he 
swept  rushingly  and  even  fantastically  forward. 
They  came  from  his  hands  like  a  magnificent  im- 
provisation of  enkindled  mind  and  spirit  of  which 
technical  accomplishment  was  the  practiced  and 
instinctive  servant.  And  when  the  music  de- 
manded, he  could  be  gay  and  humorsome.  Elo- 
quent as  he  could  be  with  the  play  of  arabesque 
over  sustained  melody  and  in  the  blending  and  con- 
trasting of  voices  he  could,  when  he  chose,  be  as 
light,  as  playful,  as  adept  as  Bach  often  was  in 
these,  his  tonal  sports  and  pastimes.  In  them — and 
surprisingly — he  could  charm  as,  in  more  sonorous 
moment,  he  could  thrill. 

[129] 


VI.      MOISEIWITSCH  AND  INTELLECT 

We  are  at  the  turn,  as  it  were,  in  the  passage  of 
pianists.  In  the  newer  generation,  qualities  of  the 
mind  expressing  themselves  in  reciprocal  qualities 
of  the  hand  are  uppermost  in  Mr.  Hofmann,  in 
Mr.  Bauer,  in  measure  in  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch,  in 
germ  in  Mr.  Levitski.  They  hark  back  to  Busoni 
— penetrating  and  individual  intellect,  measuring 
imagery,  sentiment  and  emotion — rather  than  to 
Paderewski,  passionate  and  poetic  spirit  releasing 
itself  in  tones. 

Of  this  intellectual  line  is  Benno  Moiseiwitsch. 
His  mind  discovers  and  adjusts  the  design  of  the 
composer  in  the  piece  in  hand;  chooses  and  sets  in 
proportionate  array  the  technical  resources  whereby 
he  may  compass  it.  By  exercise  of  the  intellect 
rather  than  by  spontaneous  play  of  responsive 
temperament,  Mr.  Moiseiwitsch  seems  to  apprehend 
and  distill  the  particular  beauty  of  voice  or  mood 
that  the  composer  would  evoke;  the  emotion,  senti- 
ment, picture,  vision  that  has  brought  the  piece  into 
being.  By  similar  transfer  from  one  mind  to  an- 
[130] 


PIANISTS 

other  the  creative  faculty  in  the  composer  becomes 
the  re-creative  faculty  in  the  pianist. 

Then  to  the  technical  means.  Again  they  are 
the  exercises  of  a  penetrating,  precise,  perfecting 
mind.  Mr.  Moiseiwitsch's  tone  is  richly  sonorous 
without  trace  of  roughness,  coarseness,  overstrain. 
It  is  luminous  without  a  hint  of  the  hardness  of  an 
overcrystalline  touch.  It  is  endlessly  supple;  yet 
not  an  outline  is  blurred.  Of  many  colors,  of  many 
accents,  yet  always  in  adept  proportion  is  this 
tone.  It  achieves  both  beauty  and  power.  It  is 
a  tone  admirably  suited  to  the  music  of  Brahms 
whose  endless  and  intricate  technical  exactions  he 
can  sweep  before  him,  whose  grave,  moody 
and  sometimes  abstruse  wanderings  he  can  play 
with  an  impression  of  continuous  creative  and  re- 
creative fire.  With  many  of  the  modern  com- 
posers, too,  he  is  in  intellectual  accord.  He  is 
clearly  of  kin  to  Ravel,  for  instance,  whose  piece  of 
the  fountains  and  the  water-god  he  makes  a  little 
mar%'el  of  tonal  illusion  and  graphic  imagery. 
There  is  mystery  and  magic,  too,  in  his  interpreta- 
tions of  Debussy.  He  can  compass  the  bright,  crisp 
or  broken  rhythms  of  Cyril  Scott.  His  is  a  tone 
lacking  only  the  sensuous  loveliness  which  up- 
springs  from  a  mind  and  spirit  softer  in  fiber;  the 
[131] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

emotional  thrill  that  is  bom  of  a  temperament  in 
which  there  is  less  reflection  and  more  instinct. 
This  lack  denies  him  the  finest  romantic  sensibility, 
the  freest  of  romantic  zest.  His  Chopin,  for  in- 
stance, may  gain  a  songful  or  brooding  or  visionary 
beauty.  But  here  and  there  are  a  slowiisss  of 
pace  at  which  it  is  possible  to  demur,  an  almost  too 
precise  articulation,  without  sufl&cient  poetizing 
affluence. 


[132] 


VII.    NovAEs  Newly  Risen 

Miss  Novaes  continues,  for  the  younger  gen- 
eration of  pianists,  the  great  line.  Youth,  comeli- 
ness and  unobtrusive  absorption  in  her  task  that 
seems  to  leave  no  room  for  thought  of  an  audience, 
commend  her.  As  technician,  she  is  finely  apt 
rather  than  energetic,  or  what  the  common- 
places of  the  concert-hall  call  "brilliant."  That 
is  to  say  in  such  show-pieces  as  Liszt's  "Forest- 
Murmurs,"  "Dance  of  Gnomes"  and  Rhapsodies, 
the  ear  notes  the  limpidity  of  her  scales,  the  bright- 
ness of  her  trills,  the  flowing  grace  of  her  arpeggii, 
the  evenness  of  her  runs,  the  roundness  of  her 
octaves,  rather  than  the  practiced,  ready  skill  so 
accomplishing  them.  Not  one  touch  has  she,  but 
many — ^to  distribute  the  coloring  of  her  tone 
from  mellow  glow  through  sustained  radiance  to 
airy  sparkle.  A  tone  so  sensitive  and  poised  to 
clearness,  force,  hue,  is  sure  betokening  of  a  keen- 
ness of  intelligence,  a  ripeness  of  temperament, 
rare  in  so  young  a  pianist.  Already — and  for 
further  marvel — Miss  Novaes  appreciates  both  the 
[133] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

limitations  and  the  possibilities  of  her  instrument. 
Not  once  does  she  try  to  force  it  to  quasi-thunderous 
voice,  to  stretch  it  to  quasi-orchestral  range  of  tim- 
bre and  color.  Yet  at  every  turn  she  summons  its 
more  songful  speech  and  utilizes  the  diversities  and 
contrasts  of  tonal  color  that  it  may  yield.  Her 
sense  of  design  with  the  music,  of  proportion  with 
the  piano,  also  applauds  her.  Never  does  she  let 
pianistic  fancy  harden  into  mere  pianistic  display. 
As  an  imaginative  musician  writes,  so  an  imagi- 
native musician  plays.  Beyond  peradventure  an 
old  head  sits  upon  her  young  shoulders. 

Miss  Novaes,  in  her  present  estate,  is  doubly 
fortunate.  She  is  not  to  be  taken  for  granted  and 
she  is  remembered.  On  the  way  to  a  concert  by 
Mr.  Hofmann,  Mr.  Bauer,  Mr.  Grainger,  even  by 
the  young  Mr.  Levitzki,  the  listener  knows  in  meas- 
ure what  to  expect;  at  the  concert  itself,  with  rare 
exception  for  better  or  for  worse,  he  usually  re- 
ceives it.  The  "following"  of  every  pianist  would 
have  him  so;  it  is  our  American  way  to  set  and 
fix  every  artist  in  his  appropriate  niche.  Perish 
his  audiences,  if  he  happens  to  be  restless  there. 
Miss  Novaes  is  still  comparative  newcomer; 
freshly  ears  await  her;  while  she  herself  at  each 
hearing  amplifies  powers,  enriches  pleasure. 
[134] 


PIANISTS 

Thereby  she  is  clearly  remembered,  anticipated 
anew.  Routine  pianist — even  in  the  routine  of  the 
illustrious — Miss  Novaes  will  hardly  be  for  years 
to  come.    She  is  still  in  the  days  of  ripening. 


[135] 


V 

VIOLINISTS 


I.     "Father"  Auer 

NOW  Pugnani  taught  Viotti;  and  Viotti 
taught  Rode;  and  it  was  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  And  Rode  taught 
Bohm;  and  Bohm  taught  Joachim;  and  Joachim 
taught  Auer;  and  it  was  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Then  Auer  taught  Heifetz  and  it  was  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  and  these  days. 

So  runs,  like  a  verse  in  the  Book  of  the  Chroni- 
cles and  in  clearer  descent  than  some  which  it  re- 
cords, the  royal  line  from  1731  to  1922  that, 
whatever  the  accident  of  individual  nationality, 
has  perpetuated  the  Italian  school  of  violin-play- 
ing and  faithful  to  an  august  standard,  has  set  the 
making  of  music,  in  the  finer  sense  of  the  words, 
above  the  display  of  skill.  Of  this  illustrious  com- 
pany in  our  time,  Joachim  never  condescended  to 
the  United  States;  "transcontinental  tours"  were  no 
institution  in  his  prime;  while  the  America  of  his 
imagination  was  the  country  and  the  folk  he  re- 
membered from  the  tales  of  Chateaubriand  and 
Cooper.  As  surely,  had  not  war  and  revolution 
[139] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

altered  the  face  of  Russia,  Auer  would  never  have 
crossed  the  seas.  Pupils  from  the  four  comers  of 
the  earth  flocked  to  him  at  Petrograd;  he  enjoyed 
life  there  as  it  went  under  the  vanished  Tsars;  his 
fullest  years  were  his  years  in  Peter's  capital.  Yet 
to  New  York  he  came  in  his  seventy-third  year, 
and  once  more  the  concert-room,  from  which  he 
had  long  withdrawn,  tempted  him.  Up  and  down 
America  had  gone  his  pupils  from  Mr.  Elman  and 
Miss  Parlow  to  Eddy  Brown  and  Jascha  Heifetz, 
spreading  directly  the  fame  of  their  master.  Surely 
American  eyes  were  eager  to  see,  American  ears 
to  hear,  the  violinist  who  had  nurtured  such 
violinists. 

Obviously,  in  the  test,  Auer  contended  with 
the  inevitable  handicaps  of  his  years.  Even  so,  he 
escaped  many  an  infirmity  that  made  the  playing 
of  his  master,  Joachim,  in  the  final  years  at  Lon- 
don and  Berlin,  a  painful  disillusion.  The  Rus- 
sian's ear  was  still  true;  his  memory  played  him  no 
tricks;  his  hand  answered  to  mental  control  and 
imaginative  prompting;  his  sense  of  quality  of 
tone  and  befitting  style  with  his  several  pieces  was 
undiminished.  Clearly,  for  example,  as  he  trav- 
ersed his  program,  he  differentiated  a  Sonata  of 
Locatelli,  which  is  music  of  bold  pattern-weaving, 
[140] 


VIOLINISTS 

interesting  chiefly  for  the  course  and  the  contours 
of  the  melodies  and  the  play  of  figure  within  and 
around  them,  from  a  Concerto  by  Nardini  in  which 
tonal  beauty  and  feeling  no  less  than  tonal  design 
and  progress  invite  the  ear.  He  was  as  direct  and 
austere  with  a  stripped  sonata  out  of  Handel,  as  he 
was  graceful  and  elegant  with  a  serenade  and  a 
quick  movement  transcribed  from  Haydn.  It  is 
possible  to  object  that  Auer  reduced  fragments  of 
Bach  to  the  voice  of  salon  music — yet  Johann 
Sebastian  was  not  above  the  entertainment  of  the 
petty  court  of  Anhalt-Cothen — but  his  playing  of 
Vitale's  Chaconne,  a  violinist's  test-piece,  lacked 
neither  ample  and  sonorous  voice  nor  large  and 
stately  progress. 

Such  perception  and  discrimination,  instilled 
and  cultivated  by  master  in  pupil,  stands  clear  in 
the  playing  of  Mr.  Heifetz,  once  stood  clear  in  the 
playing  of  the  younger  Elman.  Mr.  Heifetz's  tone 
owes  its  unique  quality  to  the  mingled  sensitive- 
ness and  freedom  of  his  bowing,  to  like  play  of 
fingers  upon  the  strings.  If  in  the  toll  of  the  years 
Auer  could  no  longer  gain  complete  freedom,  he 
still  kept  sensitiveness  of  hand  and  ear.  To  this 
day,  Mr.  Elman  is  pleasurably  vivacious  when  he 
plays  those  allegros  in  the  elder  music  of  the  violin 
[141] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

that  are  but  bright;  and  lively  pattern-weaving. 
His  master,  at  more  than  twice  his  age,  could  sum- 
mon a  like  lightness  of  tone  and  accent.  Who  that 
has  heard  Mr.  Heifetz  play  the  Chaconne  of  Bach 
or  the  Chaconne  of  Vitale  has  forgotten  the  large, 
expanding,  proportioned,  contrasted  design  in 
which  the  youth  fashions  the  two  musics;  how 
they  seem  to  create  themselves  under  his  inciting 
hand;  how  strand  after  strand  is  spun,  set  in 
march,  diversified,  developed,  woven  into  the  tex- 
ture and  the  progress  of  the  whole;  how  a  grave  and 
warm  directness  gives  new  vitality,  new  impression 
to  the  music?  To  hear  Auer  play  this  same  Cha- 
conne of  Vitale  was  to  understand  that  even  Hei- 
fetz has  bettered  his  instruction  only  with  play  of 
youthful  prowess  and  of  innate  violinistic  in- 
stincts that  excel  in  themselves  his  master's.  The 
model  stood  clear. 

And  so  forth  and  so  onward  with  twenty  tokens 
of  that  teaching  by  which  Auer  cultivates  the  abil- 
ities and  the  impulses  of  pupils  until,  upbuilding 
upon  his  foundations,  they  excel,  or  bid  fair  to 
excel,  their  master.  But  like  the  finest  and  the 
truest  of  them,  he  gave  proof  of  that  devotion  to 
the  unalloyed  voice  of  the  violin  and  to  the  un- 
clouded speech  of  music  which  is  the  glory  of 
[142] 


VIOLINISTS 

those  Italian  traditions  and  standards.  Mr.  Heifetz, 
Mr.  Spalding,  Mr.  Kreisler  and  a  few  others 
have  them  now  in  their  keeping.  From  Tartini, 
Corelli,  Pugnani,  Viotti  they  have  endured  for  two 
centuries  and  a  half  through  Rode,  Joachim  and 
Auer;  by  the  practice  and  what  in  time  may  be  the 
teaching  of  the  violinists  now  in  young  or  matured 
prime,  they  promise  to  continue  into  the  genera- 
tion to  come.  They  affirm  the  obligation  of  the 
violinist  to  set  forth  his  music  in  the  speech  of  the 
composer  as  closely  as  he  may  apprehend  it,  as 
clearly  as  he  may  project  it,  without  thought  of 
distortion  of  it  to  himself  or  of  display  through  it 
of  his  own  powers.  They  bid  him  be  musician 
before  he  is  violinist  and  so  surrender  himself  to 
his  music.  Again  they  enjoin  him  to  use  the  violin 
for  neither  feat  nor  trick  Paganini-wise,  but  to 
draw  from  it  with  arm,  wrist  and  fingers,  to  hear 
with  the  finest  ear,  to  direct  with  the  most  sensitive 
control  in  mind  and  spirit,  the  unmatched  beauty 
and  expressiveness  of  voice  that  it  will  give  back 
to  those  so  cherishing  and  guiding  it.  There  is 
high  faith,  a  noble  devotion  in  those  Italian  stand- 
ards,  alike  with  music  and  with  instrument.  Not 
another  code  for  the  violin  is  comparable  with 
them. 

[143] 


II.    Kreisler — ^The  Man  in  the  Music 

Before  Mr.  Kreisler's  tone,  listening  becomes  a 
spiritual  faculty.  No  other  violinist  so  melts  the 
listening  mind,  ear,  heart  into  a  common  pleasure, 
a  sublimated  and  suffusing  sensuous  delight.  He 
keeps  his  tone  like  a  finely  spxm  thread  of  beauti- 
ful, penetrating,  exquisitely  modulated  sound, 
never  halting,  never  breaking,  never  losing  either 
resilience  or  glamour,  a  sensitive  and  subtle  speech 
that  quickens  in  turn  the  finest  sensibilities  of 
those  that  hear. 

Yet  so  universal  is  Mr.  Kreisler's  genius  that  he 
is  one  of  the  few  virtuosi  of  our  day  who  draws  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  listeners,  from  the  adept 
and  discriminating  to  the  mere  seekers  of  enter- 
tainment. Those  upon  whom  Mr.  Kreisler,  the 
personality  expressing  itself  through  his  violin,  ex- 
ercises an  endless  fascination,  sit  beside  those  who 
find  a  lasting  satisfaction  in  his  finesse  as  tech- 
nician, in  his  insight  with  the  pieces  in  hand,  in  his 
felicities  of  style.  Those  who  hear  only  his  silken 
tone,  shining  with  delicate  lusters,  stand  elbow  to 
[144] 


VIOLINISTS 

elbow  with  those  who  almost  forget  the  violinist 
when  he  carves  cameo-like  some  pattern  of  ancient 
music,  or  glorifies  with  zest  of  hand  and  fancy  some 
trifle  from  his  own  or  another's  pen. 

And  what  an  ingratiating  and  stimulating  figure 
Mr.  Kreisler  is,  in  his  own  right  as  it  were,  when 
he  comes  upon  the  stage — this  plain  man  without 
a  trick  of  manner,  without  a  touch  of  aflfectation, 
without  a  hint  of  self-assertion!  In  his  springy 
stride,  which  seems  to  halt  only  because  there  is  an 
edge  to  the  stage,  speaks  his  elasticity  of  spirit;  his 
quiet  pose  suggests  its  concentration;  his  clear 
glance  its  poise  and  its  faculty  of  illumination.  He 
plays  and  he  seems  to  take  no  thought  of  his  au- 
dience; he  is  not  on  view  before  them  to  prove  by 
the  motions  of  head  and  body  his  response  to  his 
music.  He  does  not  consult  the  ceiling;  knit  or 
relax  his  brows,  or  weave  back  and  forth  after  the 
manner  of  elephants  in  chains.  Unaffectedly  he 
sinks  himself  in  his  work;  for  the  time  he  persuades 
his  audience  to  hear  only  the  violin,  the  music  and 
the  Kreisler  who  is  content  to  be  their  glorifying 
voice.  They  said  that  Paganini's  playing  was  a 
magic  of  the  devil.  Kreisler's  has  a  finer  magic 
— ^the  magic  of  entire  self-subordination.  Among 
violinists,  he  is  as  Dr.  Muck  among  conductors, 
[145] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

as  Mr.  Hofmann  among  pianists,  the  servant  of  his 
music,  his  instrument  and  his  artistry  and  so  the 
master  of  all  three. 

Mr.  Kreisler's  programs  usually  include  pieces 
out  of  the  composers  of  the  seventeenth  and  eight- 
eenth centuries — from  Bach,  Mozart  and  Gluck, 
from  the  French  miniaturists,  Couperin  and  Car- 
tier,  from  Pugnani,  Corelli  and  Tartini.  Often 
they  are  the  music  of  court  and  salon,  slender  or 
ample  in  form,  grave  or  gay  in  mood.  Obsession 
as  they  sometimes  seem  with  him,  yet  do  they  dis- 
close many  of  the  finer  qualities  of  his  playing,  as 
perhaps  no  other  numbers  do.  More :  he  even  per- 
suades his  hearers  to  take  thought  of  these  pieces 
apart  from  violin  and  violinist.  All  this  music, 
moreover — and  Mr.  Kreisler's  own  trifles  with  their 
touches  of  eighteenth-century  melancholy,  and  even 
Paganini's  masking  of  technical  feats  under  fanci- 
ful or  eloquent  exercise — exists  for  its  own  charm 
and  its  own  beauty  and  for  such  other  charm  and 
beauty  as  the  violinist  may  add  to  them.  Since  it 
is  such,  Mr.  Kreisler's  zest  for  it  and  perfections  in 
it  are  easy  to  understand.  Another  violinist  might 
match  him  in  knowledge  of  his  instrument,  might 
possess  his  technique,  tone,  even  his  illuminative 
faculty  of  imagination.  Yet  would  he  lack  the 
[146] 


VIOLINISTS 

fine  impulse  to  the  flowering  fancy  of  Gluck*s 
melody;  feel  not  the  gentle  wistfulness  of  Cou- 
perin;  hear  no  voice  of  old  in  the  Viennese 
Caprice;  discover  no  large,  free,  fertile  improvisa- 
tion in  the  Italian  pieces;  and  see  or  hear  no  pat- 
terns dancing  upon  the  air  in  Bach's  Suite.  In 
Kreisler,  imagination  becomes  emotion  and  when 
imagination  and  emotion  are  so  fused  and  of  such 
effect  they  are  the  attributes  of  genius.  For 
genius — ^the  special  election  for  special  work  by 
fore-ordering  and  fore-equipping  fate — is  the 
alembic  through  which  Mr.  Kreisler  distills  tone, 
and  technique,  imagination  and  emotion,  violin  and 
music. 


[147] 


III.    Heifetz,  Newly  Ripening 

At  each  hearing  of  Mr.  Heifetz  he  gives  fresh 
proof  of  the  qualities  that  have,  in  so  short  a  time, 
set  him  among  the  illustrious  violinists  of  our  day. 
He  has  given  such  voice  to  the  ancient  classics  of 
the  violin,  to  Bach's  and  Vitale's  Chaconnes,  for 
example,  as  the  ears  of  this  generation  have  heard 
only  from  Mr.  Kreisler.  Once  more,  at  his  hands, 
as  at  Mr.  Kreisler's,  the  violin  has  become  what  it 
really  is — especially  in  distinction  above  the 
piano — an  aristocratic  instrument. 

In  the  bearing  of  Mr.  Heifetz  toward  his  au- 
diences there  is  also  hint  of  this  aristocracy;  for 
unlike  one  or  another  violinist  of  these  days,  he 
comes  out  of  no  common  Russian  Jewry,  but  of 
an  ancient  and  cultivated  Hebrew  family,  long 
practicing  the  arts  of  music  within  and  without 
the  synagogue.  So  bom  and  bred,  accustomed  to 
public  appearance  from  childhood,  his  repose  upon 
the  stage  is  both  natural  and  becoming.  Even 
now,  when  he  is  plainly  in  transition  from  the  im- 
pulses of  youth  toward  the  impulses  of  manhood, 
[148] 


VIOLINISTS 

the  tension  within  but  tightens  the  outward  calm. 
The  very  impassiveness  of  face  and  body,  re- 
sented by  some  of  his  hearers,  commend  him.  Be- 
cause one  happens  to  be  by  inclination  and  profes- 
sion an  executive  artist  of  music,  must  one,  there- 
fore, wear  one's  mind  and  heart  on  the  sleeve  for 
the  gaze  of  audiences?  Enough,  and  more  than 
enough,  in  the  name  of  a  decent  reticence,  that  the 
mind  and  the  heart,  as  Mr.  Heifetz's  surely  do, 
pervade  the  playing.  Better  the  concentration  and 
the  passion  within  that  guides,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, each  stroke  of  the  bow,  every  play  of 
the  fingers;  better  the  spiritual  intensity  sending 
forth  each  period  of  the  music  as  though  it  were 
created  anew,  than  all  the  soulful  uptumings  of 
eyes  ceilingward  and  the  swayings  of  body  like 
pump  to  an  oversentimentalized  melody. 

To  be  poised  before  an  audience,  like  Mr.  Hei- 
fetz,  neither  courting  nor  disdaining  it,  is  to  hold 
the  artist's  powers  in  firmer,  finer  leash  for  the 
task  in  hand,  for  the  pleasure  to  be  bestowed.  Yet 
to  call  this  aspect,  this  demeanor  impassive,  is  not 
to  name  it  quite  accurately,  since  in  the  gravity  of 
Mr.  Heifetz  before  his  hearers  is  clear  individual- 
izing quality.  Whereas  Mr.  Zimbalist,  for  exam- 
ple, is  impassive,  almost  negative,  to  the  eye  in  the 
[149] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

concert-room,  Mr.  Heifetz  seems  unmistakably 
intent  upon  his  music,  his  playing.  For  the  time, 
they  absorb  him  until,  for  him,  there  is  naught 
else  in  the  world.  Once  embarked  upon  concerto, 
sonata,  suite,  merely  miscellaneous  piece,  he  and  it 
— the  music,  the  violinistic  means,  the  medium  that 
he  himself  has  become — are  all  inextricably  fused. 
Out  of  him  rapt,  the  breath  of  genius  blows  upon 
an  audience. 

For  no  word  short  of  genius  may  now  be  ad- 
visedly used  of  the  qualities  that  make  Mr.  Heifetz 
in  his  early  twenties  one  of  the  few  signal  violinists 
of  this  day.  The  eye,  inevitably,  discovers 
his  youth;  but  not  until  recently  has  the  ear 
noted  signs  of  counted  and  changing  years. 
Even  so,  the  quality  of  tone  little  reflects  this  ma- 
turing. It  remains  the  voice  of  the  violin,  absolute 
and  unalloyed — not  the  more  or  less  individualized 
tone  of  other  illustrious  violinists  of  the  hour.  As 
often  as  not  it  remains  also  the  perfect  voice  of  the 
music.  Only  when  the  phrases  broaden  and  the 
accents  sharpen,  when  the  lines  move  more  largely 
and  the  periods  deepen  and  swell,  does  the  chang- 
ing Heifetz  draw  the  bow. 

He  may  do  what  technical  feats  he  will  with  the 
ease,  the  certainty,  the  brilliance  of  the  flash  of  a 
[150] 


VIOLINISTS 

jewel  when  light  catches  and  penetrates  it;  but 
they  remain  to  the  essential  qualities  of  his  tone 
what  the  staccati,  the  scales,  the  mesa  di  voce  of  an 
omate  singer  are  to  her  real  mastery  of  the  art  of 
song.  Without  the  extraordinary  skill  and  sensi- 
bility of  hand  and  without  the  equal  fineness  and 
susceptibility  of  ear,  he  could  not  do  these  feats 
as  he  does,  however  much  innate  instinct  and  ardu- 
ous practice  might  serve  him.  In  those  same  quali- 
ties of  hand  and  ear  dwells  the  secret  of  a  tone,  the 
like  of  which  in  intrinsic  beauty,  in  pure  and  quin- 
tessential voice  of  his  instrument  only  Mr.  Kreisler 
and  Mr.  Casals  may  now  draw  from  wood  and 
strings. 

More  and  more,  as  it  seems,  this  tone  tends  to 
take  texture  and  tincture,  progress  and  motion, 
from  a  mind  and  spirit  individually  stirred.  For 
a  time,  it  was  the  abstract  and  absolute  perfection 
of  Mr.  Heifetz's  playing  that  most  possessed  his 
audiences.  They  heard  the  voice  of  the  violin  con- 
veying unflawed  the  voice  of  the  music  unclouded. 
No  interpreter,  as  the  stock  phrase  is,  stood  between 
hearer  and  composer,  no  moodiness  in  the  violinist 
interposed  upon  the  instrument.  Along  the  stream 
of  tone  flowed  the  piece  in  hand,  while  the  violinist 
himself  threw  no  reflection  upon  this  unspecked 
[151] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

current,  stirred  no  eddies  along  its  course.  With 
the  ripening  of  Mr.  Heifetz  from  youth  to  man, 
inevitable  change  has  come.  The  impulse  has  nor- 
mally entered  into  him  to  re-create  the  given  music 
in  his  own  image,  to  make  the  violin  speak  for 
himself  as  well  as  for  the  composer.  As  yet  these 
reactions  are  somewhat  blurred,  the  will  to  convey 
them  discoverably  groping  for  the  way.  Then, 
for  the  instant,  flaws  scratch  the  younger  perfec- 
tion, the  tranquil  luminosity  of  the  unquestioning 
years  becomes  obscured,  the  chroniclers  write  of  a 
time  of  transition.  Through  such  years  of  struggle 
and  mastery  Mr.  Heifetz  now  goes.  Already,  how- 
ever, dart  out  of  them  the  hours  in  which  he  holds 
the  goal  and  summons  the  means.  Then  his  play- 
ing of  Bach,  for  example,  sounds  with  the  breadths, 
the  depths  and  the  heights  of  ardent  re-creation; 
while  shadowed  old  eighteenth-century  masters  are 
of  a  sudden  incandescent  again. 


[152] 


rv.    ZiMBALiST  Seeking  Beauty 

Mr.  Zimbalist  has  ripened  into  maturity  in  those 
qualities  that  made  him  from  the  first  a  notably 
individual  and  isolated  violinist.  He  was,  when 
he  first  came  to  America,  and  he  is  now,  the 
violinist  of  the  abstract  and  disembodied  beauty 
of  the  voice  of  the  violin  and  the  music  that  serves 
it.  In  those  days  his  tone  had  a  rare  limpidity  and 
softness.  It  was  delicately  luminous;  it  was  quite 
without  edge;  it  had  the  pure  beauty  of  disem- 
bodied sound.  It  is  richer  and  warmer  now;  it  has 
gained  that  penetrating  quality  which  indi- 
vidualizes the  violin  among  other  instruments.  In 
the  sheer  feeling  for  it  that  caresses  its  secrets  from 
it  and  makes  the  violinist  and  the  violin  each  an  in- 
separable complement  of  the  other,  Mr.  Zimbalist 
is  most  like  Mr.  Heifetz.  His  deep  devotion  to 
the  abstract  beauty  of  his  instrument  and  his  music 
isolates  his  temperament  and  defines  his  playing. 

Mr.  Ysaye's  puissant  nature  magnified  pieces 
and  performance;  Mr.  Kreisler  attunes  both  to  the 
[153] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

fineness  of  his  spirit;  Mr.  Elman,  unless  he  curbs 
himself,  plays  upon  the  easier  sensibilities  of  his 
hearers;  Mr.  Spalding  vibrates  between  a  gravity 
almost  austere  and  a  soft  Italian  glow.  Mr.  Hei- 
fetz  and  Mr.  Zimbalist  make  pure  distillation  of 
music  and  instrument.  In  the  younger  man  went 
hint  of  uncanny  perfection,  whereas  Mr.  Zimbalist 
works  his  clear  will  upon  both.  There  is  not  a  vio- 
linist who  seems  so  negative  as  Mr.  Zimbalist — 
until  he  plays.  He  disdains  to  cultivate  his  au- 
dience, yet  no  more  would  he  be  deliberately  indif- 
ferent. Without  a  trace  of  self -consciousness  he 
comes,  he  goes.  Always  his  aloofness  is  the  aloof- 
ness of  a  reticence  with  self,  of  a  whole-minded 
absorption  in  the  chosen  task. 

Sometimes  in  his  miscellaneous  pieces  at  the 
end  of  a  concert  he  will  include  some  fashionable 
piece  of  the  hour — Sarasate's  fantasia  upon 
Bizet's  "Carmen,"  for  instance.  It  vies  with  Liszt's 
familiar  and  similar  fantasias  for  piano  in  epitome 
of  the  chosen  opera,  in  vivid  suggestion  of  the 
illusions  of  the  theater.  And  Mr.  Zimbalist  plays 
it  as  bravura  piece  for  the  violin.  Nineteen  out 
of  twenty  listeners  are  "programing"  and  dram- 
atizing it.  Yet  for  him  it  is  as  "absolute"  and  self- 
[154] 


VIOLINISTS 

contained  as  though  it  were  Reger's  Prestissimo  or 
the  sixth  variation  of  Corelli.  His  mind,  hand  and 
spirit  know  no  other  way;  yet  thereby  he  is  rare 
and  precious  violinist. 


[155] 


V.    Spalding  Taking  Thought 

Our  public  needed  several  years  to  learn  that  Al- 
bert Spalding  had  become,  in  his  days  of  study 
and  public  performance  abroad,  an  impeccable 
virtuoso,  an  understanding  musician  and  an  artist 
with  an  individuality  and  style  of  his  own.  It  chose 
to  mistrust  because  he  had  been  overzealously 
heralded  on  his  jfirst  appearance  here.  It  may 
also  have  doubted  because  he  is  American  by  birth 
and  breeding  and  therefore  without  the  glamour 
that  often  sheds  itself  upon  less  well-equipped  and 
less  deserving  virtuosi  of  foreign  birth  and  fame. 

He  has  won  his  present  position,  then,  as  he 
has  won  all  else  in  his  career,  by  no  other  virtues 
than  his  own  assiduity,  ambition,  standards  and 
self -ripening.  So  doing,  he  won  deservedly,  heart- 
eningly.  For  several  years,  it  was  his  way,  on 
each  new  appearance,  to  reveal  or  heighten  some 
signal  quality  as  musician  and  man.  During  these 
years,  however,  the  power  of  complete  revelation, 
the  ability  to  make  the  music  in  hand  sound  as  if 
it  were  newly  created  as  he  played  it,  seemed  to 
[156] 


VIOLINISTS 

elude  him.  Then  of  a  sudden  (and  not  longer  than 
1916)  to  his  old  command  of  technique  and  tone, 
to  his  old  insight  and  high  musicianship,  he  added 
the  transmitting  and  transfiguring  force  which  he 
had  hitherto  lacked.  Now,  he  plays  with  an  ex- 
ceeding opulence  of  tone,  as  resonant  as  it  is  rich, 
as  sensitive  as  it  is  full-bodied  and  songful.  This 
tone  on  the  technical  side  is  bom  of  a  very  fuU, 
fine  and  ready  mastery  of  the  technique  of  the 
violin.  It  is  bom  no  less  of  that  musical  intelli- 
gence by  which  violinist,  pianist  or  singer  hears 
himself  and  measures  and  orders  accordingly  the 
quality  of  his  particular  voice.  It  is  bom,  yet 
again — and  for  final  glory — of  that  instinct  and 
affection  for  an  instrument  that  gives  it  confidence 
— to  follow  a  not  altogether  fanciful  idea — ^to 
speak  its  secrets  into  his  ears  and,  through  him,  to 
the  attending  listeners.  It  is  the  mark  of  the  artist 
of  the  illustrious  line — of  Mme,  Gulp,  for  example, 
in  song;  of  Mr.  Gabrilowitsch,  with  the  piano — ^to 
possess  this  instinctive  and  affectionate  command  of 
his  medium. 

In  more  respects  than  one  the  playing  of  ancient 

music  is  the  criterion  of  a  violinist.    The  rhythms 

beat,  the  phrases  expand,  the  melody  takes  shape 

and  progress,  ornament  runs  beside  it.    And  lo! 

[157] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

the  pattern  is  woven  in  a  fine  ecstasy  of  assured 
creation,  though  the  music  may  have  been  all  in 
the  day's  work  for  busy  Bach  or  diligent  Tartini, 
who  did  their  "job"  quite  as  often  as  they  com- 
posed for  themselves.  But  in  them  was  that  per- 
petual fountain  and  perpetual  passion  of  creation 
in  tones  that  are  the  perpetual  pleasure  and  ex- 
citement of  this  elder  music — ^the  passion  and  the 
plenty  that  make  the  formal  prescriptions  seem 
the  willing  servants  of  the  beauty  and  the  power 
that  were  in  the  spirits  of  these  men  when  they 
so  spoke  forth.  The  imparting  violinist  must  speak 
as  nobly,  as  abundantly,  as  passionately  as  they 
and  then  will  he  transport  his  hearers  into  the  very 
thrill  and  joy  of  this  creation.  It  is  this  miracle 
that  Mr.  Spalding  works. 


[158] 


VI.    Thibaud,  the  Finely  Strung 

Jacques  Thibaud  is  a  patrician  among  violinists. 
And  so,  since  a  virtuoso's  personality  will  play  into 
his  outer  semblance,  no  matter  how  continent  he 
may  be,  it  is  interesting  to  watch  the  rare  light- 
ness and  suppleness  and  sureness  of  his  bowing 
and  fingering.  They  seem  the  outward  and  visible 
signs  of  the  sensitive  and  high-bred  spirit,  the 
elastic  and  certain  command  within.  Whatever  the 
music,  Mr.  Thibaud's  tone  in  itself  is  not  quite 
like  that  of  any  other  violinist.  It  is  not  a  very 
fine  tone,  like  Mr.  Kreisler's;  it  is  not  a  very  big 
tone,  as  Mr.  Ysaye's  was;  it  is  not  the  disem- 
bodied tone  of  Mr.  Heifetz  or  Mr.  Zimbalist.  It 
is  rather  a  tone  of  soft  and  velvety  texture,  of 
caressing  warmth — a  tone  that  persuades  the  ear 
rather  than  penetrates  it;  a  tone  that  glows  softly 
with  the  colors  that  the  violinist  sheds  upon  it.  No 
violinist  that  plays  in  these  days,  not  even  Mr. 
Kreisler,  plays  Bach  as  does  Mr.  Thibaud.  He 
opens  the  music;  he  weaves  and  interweaves  its 
many  strands;  he  contrasts,  coalesces  and  colors 
[159] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

them.  Other  violinists  may  have  done  as  much  for 
Bach's  pieces  but,  most  of  them,  so  doing,  merely 
set  them  forth.  Where  such  end,  Mr.  Thibaud  be- 
gins. He  gives  the  music  its  propulsive  force; 
makes  it  sound  as  though  it  were  bom  of  creative 
passion,  almost  of  creative  inspiration. 

He  excels  also  with  the  music  of  Mozart,  the 
skeleton  forms  of  the  early  concertos  in  particular. 
With  them  the  composer  was  often  his  own  violin- 
ist. If  not,  according  to  the  custom  of  those  days, 
he  left  much  to  the  performing  virtuoso,  who  might 
be  finely  strung  musician  as  well.  The  violin- 
part — and  still  more  the  accompaniment — ^were  no 
more  than  hints  from  the  composer.  The  dexterity 
of  the  orchestra  would  fill  out  his  measures;  the 
violinist,  according  to  his  degree,  would  add  skill 
and  taste,  discernment,  artifice.  A  first  move- 
ment with  two  motives  in  interplay,  "passage-work" 
for  the  violinist's  plasticity  and  finesse,  songful 
measures  for  his  sentiment;  a  slow  movement  of 
silken  melody,  melancholy  of  mood;  a  light  and 
glinting  finale  and  the  concerto  was  done — ^for  a 
Mozart  in  perpetual  flow  of  music  through  an  easy- 
going day. 

Such  a  violinist  of  Mozartian  time,  skill,  im- 
agination, is  Mr.  Thibaud.  His  tone  glows  with 
[160] 


VIOLINISTS 

soft  lusters;  it  moves  in  delicate  undulations;  it  in- 
sinuates its  own  beauty  and  the  beauty  of  the  music 
into  ear,  mind  and  fancy.  The  "passage-work" 
of  a  first  movement  becomes  a  fine  tracery  of 
sound,  a  veritable  embroidery  upon  the  air,  spun 
in  tone  that  catches  the  lightest  inflection  of  the 
composer,  the  slightest  impulse  of  the  violinist.  A 
gentle  sentiment  plays  through  the  songful  meas- 
ures while  at  every  turn  Mr.  Thibaud  gives  them 
that  light  quiver,  that  delicate  vibration  upon  air 
and  ear  which  are  life  to  such  music.  In  this 
tremor — ^for  it  is  hardly  more — is  the  secret  loveli- 
ness of  such  Mozartian  song.  Few  musicians, 
singing  his  songs,  playing  his  piano-pieces  or  his 
concertos,  divine  it.  Fewer  still  impart  it.  In 
high  degree  Mr.  Thibaud  does  both  and  in  pene- 
trating sensation  upon  his  hearers  draws  from  Mo- 
zart a  hidden  and  characteristic  beauty. 

Passing  to  the  final  movement,  the  Rondo,  he 
will  make  caprice  vie  with  elegance.  He  will  make 
it  no  "brilliant  finale."  Rather  he  wiU  keep  the 
return  of  the  motives,  the  rhythmic  elan,  the  flow 
of  the  figures,  the  little  in-takes,  as  it  were,  of  sus- 
tained song  in  light,  fanciful,  sportive  play. 
Mozart,  like  the  other  composers  of  his  day,  would 
give  these  Rondos  the  voice,  the  air,  of  gay  and 
[161] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

adept  improvisation — the  conjurer  in  tones  at 
final  shake  of  his  magic  sack.  Mr.  Thibaud 
catches  the  intent,  conveys  the  illusion.  Through- 
out he  is  not  merely  faithful  to  his  composer.  He 
divines  him.  He  serves  this  divination  with  means 
free  from  every  technical,  every  temperamental 
infirmity.  He  is  wont  to  pursue  an  ideal  perfec- 
tion. Often  he  attains  it  and  the  concert-haU, 
when  he  does,  may  know  no  deeper  delight. 


[162] 


VII.    Elman,  for  Better  or  Worse 

Each  time  that  Mr.  Elman  is  heard  he  seems 
more  and  more  to  stand  at  the  parting  of  the  two 
roads  that  a  virtuoso  of  the  violin  may  take.  If 
he  chooses,  Mr.  Elman  can  definitely  take  the  road 
that  will  make  him  a  "popular"  violinist,  sure  of 
audiences  of  a  sort  and  more  and  more  disposed  to 
minister  unto  them.  He  ministers  to  them  now 
when  he  plays  with  the  contortions  of  his  body  that 
have  replaced  his  former  "weaving,"  as  though  he 
were  in  mighty  effort  to  release  the  emotions  surg- 
ing out  of  him  through  his  violin.  On  this  score 
Mr.  Elman  sorely  needs  either  a  sense  of  poise  or  a 
sense  of  humor.  He  ministers  to  such  auditors, 
again,  when  he  seems  to  squeeze  out  his  instru- 
mental songs  as  though  his  violin  were  a  paint 
tube  from  which  in  travail  of  spirit  he  was  press- 
ing them.  He  ministers  to  them,  finally,  when,  in 
songful  or  sharply  rhythmed  transcription,  he 
draws  out  the  song  in  long  reaches  of  sentimental 
tone  or  underscores  each  beat  of  the  measure. 
From  his  beginnings  in  America,  Mr.  Elman's  tem- 
[163] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

perament  has  seemed  exuberant.  At  first  the  out- 
let of  it  was  the  fine  fire  that  he  used  to  bring  to 
Tschaikowsky's  concerto,  for  example.  This  fire 
has  been  less  bright  of  late,  and  in  its  stead  has 
come  the  tendency  to  exaggeration,  and  even  to 
showiness.  Therein  commonness  and  a  kind  of 
popularity  lie.  In  more  respects  than  one  this 
road  may  tempt  Mr.  Elman,  but  it  is  also  a  way 
that  by  twenty  other  qualities  of  his  playing  he 
ought  not  willfully  or  mistakenly  to  choose. 

He  can  still  "read"  the  classical  sonatas  with 
young  sensibilities  and  enthusiasms.  He  seems 
never  to  suspect  that  they  are  classics  and  that  there 
are  traditions  in  the  playing  of  them.  To  him, 
they  are  only  music,  full  of  its  own  beauty,  grace 
and  vitality.  Other  violinists  give  it  various  dis- 
tinctions; he  restores  it  often  to  the  freshness  with 
which  the  first  listeners  may  have  heard  it.  Sim- 
ilarly the  quality  of  Mr.  Elman's  tone  seems  to 
point  him  along  the  road  that  the  true  virtuosi  of 
the  violin  take  to  enduring  distinction. 

Perhaps  when  a  violinist  begins  as  Mr.  Elman 
did  as  an  acclaimed  and  eloquent  prodigy  exciting 
the  vague  curiosity  and  the  momentary  admiration 
of  those  that  know  little  and  regard  even  less  the 
glories  of  the  instrument  and  its  music,  come  such 
[164] 


VIOLINISTS 

years  of  opposing  tendencies  and  wavering  inde- 
cision. The  world  knows  how  Mr.  Kreisler,  who 
was  also  a  prodigy,  emerged  out  of  them  along  the 
road  that  he  now  follows  and  to  what  place  as  vir- 
tuoso, musician  and  man  it  has  led  him.  It  knows 
also  what  fate  has  overtaken  others,  who  shall  be 
nameless  and  who  have  chosen  the  more  tempting 
way.  Not  indefinitely  will  both  be  open  to  Mr.  El- 
man,  if  indeed  they  still  are.  Like  the  rest  of  us, 
virtuosi  of  the  violin  harden  into  habits,  which  are 
not  standards. 


[165] 


VIII.      YSAYE  AND  THE   "GrAND  StYLe" 

When  Mr.  Ysaye  put  by  the  violin  to  become  or- 
chestral conductor,  his  choice  left  an  appreciable 
gap  in  the  public  imagination.  The  expert  and 
the  dilettanti  may  have  debated  at  will  and  length 
his  qualities  and  attainments  in  comparison  with 
the  other  virtuosi  of  the  bow  and  string;  but  in  the 
general  mind  Mr.  Ysaye  had  become  the  foremost 
of  living  violinists.  There  was  reason  for  the  pub- 
lic so  to  regard  him.  He  was  an  imposing  figure  in 
the  concert-hall.  Grandiloquence  was  his  way  with 
music.  He  was  the  last  of  the  great  violinists  to 
cultivate  the  "grand  style."  In  the  old  days  when 
he  played  his  black  locks  tossed  about  his  forehead 
and  his  great  body  swayed  to  and  fro  in  the  un- 
folding of  a  melody,  at  the  climax  of  advancing 
progressions. 

But  Mr.  Ysaye,  like  other  of  the  greatest  and 
the  truest  artists  of  the  theater  and  the  concert- 
hall,  underwent  the  spiritualizing  process  of  ripen- 
ing time.  It  was  as  though  he  had  distilled  his 
artistry  into  the  finest,  concentrated  essence; 
[166] 


VIOLINISTS 

stripped  himself  of  all  superfluities;  as  though  his 
personality,  his  music  and  his  utterance  of  both 
had  become  fused  into  a  single  and  simplified 
whole.  He  may  have  seemed  to  do  less,  since  he 
put  aside  all  personal  display  for  the  sake  of  dis- 
play, and  all  musical  effect  for  the  purpose  of 
the  eff"ect;  yet  he  really  accomplished  more.  As, 
with  the  years  of  richest  maturity,  he  simplified  his 
technical  resource  and  attainment,  so  also  he  spir- 
itualized the  tone  that  he  produced.  The  style  of 
his  maturity  was  a  style  for  which  he  had  polished 
every  technical  means  and  in  which  he  practiced 
every  felicity  and  finesse  of  exquisitely  sure  and 
supple  resource.  The  tone  that  this  technique 
spun  was,  in  turn,  of  golden  mellowness;  it  per- 
suaded the  ear  and  warmed  the  spirit  as  by  some 
gentle  and  glamorous  magic.  It  was  a  ripened, 
idealized,  spiritualized  playing  of  the  violin  and 
its  music.  To  the  very  end  of  his  days  as  vir-^ 
tuoso,  however,  Mr.  Ysaye  could,  when  the  music 
bade  him,  summon  the  violin  to  a  mighty  eloquence. 
He  could  mingle  the  fine  felicities  of  his  later  and 
maturer  years  with  the  tonal  sweep  and  rhythmic 
fire  that  made  him  unique  among  violinists  of  liv- 
ing memory.  He  could  still  make  his  great  effects 
of  power,  when  the  voice  of  his  violin  was  as  the 
[167] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

sound  of  many  voices,  when  the  depths,  the 
breadths,  the  sweeps  and  the  glows  of  his  tone 
seemed  unmatched  and  unmatchable.  He  could 
transfigure  the  music  he  was  playing,  however 
commonplace,  giving  it  the  voice  of  his  own  im- 
agination and  his  own  passion.  It  is  the  virtue  of 
the  "grand  style,"  the  final  attribute  of  it  to  do  so. 


[168] 


IX.    Casals,  the  Unchallenged 

Pablo  Casals  has  been  much  less  acclaimed  than 
his  established  reputation  as  the  most  remarkable 
violoncellist  of  our  time  warrants.  No  country,  no 
capital  of  music,  hears  him  too  often;  to  America 
he  has  come  sparingly;  usually  he  shares  his  re- 
citals; while  in  the  concert-hall  he  is  a  pale,  an 
impassive  figure.  Once  set  to  his  work,  his  play- 
ing wholly  absorbs  him;  his  bowed  countenance 
remains  grave  and  motionless;  he  has  scarcely  a 
trick  of  manner;  as  a  physical  presence  indeed  he 
disappears  in  piece  and  performance.  His  audi- 
ences, therefore,  do  not  include  those  who  care 
more  for  what  a  performer  seems  without  than 
for  what  he  does  within. 

Before  all  else,  Mr.  Casals  is  ripened  and  as- 
sured master  of  the  technique  of  the  violoncello. 
He  plays  it,  on  the  one  hand,  without  the  smallest 
hint  of  labor  or  display  in  the  accomplishment  of 
bravura  passages,  difficult  transitions  or  occult  har- 
monics; and  he  plays  it,  on  the  other,  with  not  a 
trace  of  exaggeration  or  sentimentalizing  of  its 
[169] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

deeper  voice  and  songful  quality.  His  intonation 
proves  alike  his  flawless  ear  and  his  imerring  hand. 
He  has  attained  a  delicacy  of  execution  that  makes 
the  minutest  figuration  in  the  music  spring  in  clear 
and  lace-like  tracery  from  his  bow.  His  reticence, 
his  sensibility,  his  regard  for  his  tone,  measured, 
luminous  and  flowing,  glamour  the  give-and-take 
of  any  miscellany,  however  severely  chosen,  with 
which  composers  belittle  violoncellists. 

At  one  extreme  there  is  not  a  hint  of  grating 
harshness  or  of  thinness  in  his  tone;  at  the  other 
there  is  not  a  trace  of  the  smear,  the  blur,  the  over- 
pressure upon  strings  and  bow  by  which  many 
a  'cellist  fancies  he  makes  his  instrument  more  ex- 
pressive. Mr.  Casals's  bowing  and  fingering  are 
ideally  light,  elastic,  sensitive  and  felicitous.  He 
does  not  command  his  instrument,  he  caresses  it. 
He  plays  not  merely  by  ripened  skill,  full  resource 
and  impeccable  ear;  but  he  plays  also  by  an 
innate  instinct  and  aptitude.  He  was  bom  for  the 
'cello  as  Mr.  Kreisler  for  the  violin  or  de  Pach- 
mann  for  the  piano.  His  flawless  delicacy  matches 
the  pianist's;  his  technical  sensitiveness  and  surety 
match  the  like  qualities  in  the  violinist;  and  he  is 
dowered,  like  both  these  virtuosi,  with  exquisite 
[170] 


VIOLINISTS 

sense  of  the  tone  that  he  evokes.  That  tone,  beyond 
all  peradventure,  is  the  ideal  voice  of  the  violon- 
cello. 

Balzac's  personage  dreamed  of  a  tone  in  the 
human  voice  that  should  concentrate  the  perfect 
beauty  of  sound.  At  moments  Mr.  Casals  so  con- 
centrates in  his  tone  the  perfect  beauty  of  his  in- 
strument. It  does  not  lack  body  and  fullness,  yet 
it  is  altogether  limpid ;  it  does  not  lack  warmth  and 
richness,  yet  it  is  never  thick  and  sluggish.  It 
flows  with  edgeless  suavity,  yet  it  undulates  to  every 
curve  of  the  music  and  vibrates  to  every  accent 
that  the  composer  has  laid  upon  it;  heat  and  light 
are  both  in  it;  and  not  only  sensuous  beauty  and 
musical  sensibility,  but  a  spiritualized  intensity 
distinguish  it.  Therein  it  is  individual  of  Mr. 
Casals  and  no  other,  for  what  the  man  is  under- 
neath— as  Mr.  Kreisler  likes  to  say — so  in  the  last 
and  fine  analysis  his  tone  must  be.  It  is  not  merely 
that  Mr.  Casals  draws  from  the  violoncello  a  tone 
that  seems  the  ideal  voice  of  the  instrument,  he 
draws  from  it  also  a  tone  that  through  the  music 
opens  the  alertly  perceiving  and  serenely  appre- 
hending mind,  the  warm,  sensitive  and  manifold 
imagination,  the  pure  heights  and  depths  of  the 
[171] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

finely-touched  spirit  of  Pablo  Casals  himself.  He 
is  remarkable  man  as  well  as  remarkable  musician; 
he  is  such  a  virtuoso  of  the  violoncello  as  these 
attributes  make  him. 


[172] 


VI 

CHAMBER-MUSIC 


I.    The  Righteous  "Flonzaleys" 

TO  write  chamber-music  is  to  write  under 
hard  prescription  and  for  the  few ;  to  play 
chamber-music  is  to  strive  for  perfection, 
again  in  a  few  appreciating  ears.  Both  are  antip- 
odes and  antidotes  to  the  passion  for  the  obvious, 
the  mediocre,  the  democratic,  now  obsessing  some 
of  us  in  "community  singing"  and  other  strenuous 
exercises  en  masse.  No  division  of  music  more 
needs  the  hand  that  discerns  as  well  as  helps;  none 
more  seldom  receives  it.  Hereabouts,  however,  it 
has  been  well  and  wisely  fostered  by  the  late 
Edward  J.  de  Coppet,  who  founded  the  Flonzaley 
Quartet,  and  by  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Shurtleff  Coolidge, 
who  for  a  time  maintained  the  Berkshire  Quartet, 
more  recently  assembled  the  Elshuco  Trio,  and, 
if  report  runs  accurately,  still  helps  Mr.  Letz's 
string  quartet  along  its  way;  while  altogether 
unobtrusively  she  has  paid  for  various  series  of 
chamber  concerts  at  universities  and  made  it  pos- 
sible for  the  London  String  Quartet  to  visit  the 
major  American  cities. 

[175] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

While  other  string  quartets  have  come — and  also 
gone — at  the  will  of  founders  and  sustainers,  at 
the  interest  or  the  indifference  of  "followings," 
for  nearly  twenty  years  the  Flonzaley  Quartet  has 
kept  place  in  American  concert-halls  and  paid  wel- 
comed visits  to  European.  As  the  Calvinistic  cate- 
chism contained  "the  whole  duty  of  man,"  so  "The 
Flonzaleys"  have  embodied,  to  us,  the  whole  duty 
of  chamber-musicians.  As  in  the  beginning  Mr. 
Betti  and  Mr.  Pochon  still  sit  in  the  seats  of  the 
violins  and  Mr.  d'Archambault  in  the  chair  of  the 
violoncello.  Aftermath  of  the  late  war  substituted 
Mr.  Bailly  for  Mr.  Ara  at  the  viola,  but  rare  or, 
maybe,  presumptuous  was  any  ear  detecting  change 
in  the  quality  of  tone  or  the  sensibility  of  the  en- 
semble. No  string  quartet  can  excel  unless  it  en- 
joy such  permanence.  It  is  not  enough  that  the 
four  should  practice  together  in  private  and  play 
together  in  public — even  ad  libitum.  Nor  yet  again 
that  they  should  consciously  strive  to  unify  tech- 
nique and  tone,  understanding  and  response,  trans- 
mission and  illumination.  Rather  they  must  enter 
into  that  instinctive  and  reciprocal  divination  of 
themselves  and  their  music,  their  means  and  ends, 
which  flowers — and  by  sub-conscious  process  only 
— in  long,  close,  affectionate  intimacy.  The  final 
[176] 


CHAMBER. MUSIC 

graces  of  a  string  quartet  are  a  spiritual  growth,  a 
spiritual  assimilation.  At  work  and  at  leisure, 
such  intimacy,  such  interplay,  have  been  both  the 
choice  and  the  lot  of  "The  Flonzaleys."  They 
themselves  have  discerned  and  willed  these  essen- 
tial conditions.  Mr.  de  Coppet,  founding  the  quar- 
tet, first  provided  the  means ;  more  recently  the  sup- 
port of  an  enduring  public  has  assured  them. 

So  minded,  so  circumstanced,  the  Flonzaley 
Quartet  has  pursued  perfection  and,  as  nearly  as  is 
possible  to  mortal  man  practicing  one  of  the  arts, 
has  kept  close  upon  her  ever-receding  heels.  The 
first  tone  of  "The  Flonzaleys"  was  a  tone  of  rare 
fineness,  suppleness,  sensibility.  It  was  molded 
in  delicate  contours,  it  yielded  to  every  inflection  of 
the  music;  it  was  transparent  as  the  day,  yet  like 
the  day  it  caught  the  light  and  shadow  of  sunshine 
or  of  cloud;  it  exhaled  the  simpler  beauty  of  in- 
strumental song;  it  made  magic  of  the  composer's 
tracery  and  arabesques.  Behind  lay  a  Latin 
lucidity  and  elegance,  a  plasticity  of  hand  and  ear, 
a  felicity  of  understanding  and  transmission  that 
were  new  things  in  chamber-concerts  in  America. 
As  few  had  heard  them  before,  now  sounded  the 
quartets  of  Haydn  and  Mozart,  the  sonatas  of  resur- 
rected composers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  of 
[177] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

Beethoven  in  his  earlier  and  middle  years.  There 
are  those  who,  a  little  regretfully,  would  have  these 
beginnings  the  halcyon  days  of  the  Flonzaley  Quar- 
tet. Let  them  be  content  that  this  early  virtue  con- 
tinues undiminished  while  to  it  have  been  added 
other  and  greater  glories. 

For,  though  perfection  may  ever  speed  her  feet 
before  her  pursuers,  yet  wider  and  wider  does  she 
spread  her  mantle.  From  the  serenities,  the  melan- 
cholies, the  gayeties  of  Mozart,  from  Haydn  pen- 
sive, playful  or  merely  at  manifold  pattern-weav- 
ing; from  the  young  Beethoven  adding^to  "the  best 
models"  the  richness  of  his  invention,  the  ardor  of 
his  spirit,  the  vigor  of  his  hand  and  the  fecundity 
of  his  skill,  "The  Flonzaleys"  were  bound  to  go 
forward.  They  went  and  with  every  year  over 
broadening  fields.  In  one  direction,  they  achieved 
the  songful  flood,  the  endless  ripple  and  glint  and 
glamour  of  the  quartets  of  Schubert;  the  eager  in- 
tensities, the  changeful  glow,  the  shadowed  striv- 
ings, the  radiant  fulfillments  of  the  quartets  of 
Schumann.  The  voices  that  had  undulated  to  clas- 
sical continence  of  line  and  reticence  of  inflection, 
now  spoke — and  not  less  eloquently — in  the  bolder 
curves,  the  larger  emphases,  the  inspired  irregulari- 
ties, the  passionate  freedoms  of  romantic  music. 
[178] 


C  H  A  M  B  E  R  -  M  U  S  I  C 

In  another  direction,  "The  Flonzaleys"  compassed 
the  racial  rhythmic  tang,  the  melody  of  the  soil, 
the  folk-song  footfall — and  the  folk-song  repetition 
— of  an  occasional  Bohemian  like  Dvorak,  of  a 
semi-occasional  and  a  semi-sophisticated  Russian. 
Expanding  yet  again  and  deepening  withal,  they 
essayed  the  relatively  austere,  abstruse,  ruminat- 
ing and  remote  music  of  Brahms.  Then,  first,  in 
a  long  and  sunny  progress,  reproach  overtook  them. 
"The  Flonzaleys"  are  Latins.  Therefore  when  they 
give  voice  to  music,  they  incline  to  lucidity,  pre-, 
cision,  to  the  play  of  lyric  impulse  in  poetry  and 
fancy,  to  refinement  rather  than  ruggedness.  The 
reasoned  perceptions  of  the  mind  will  not  always 
curb  the  instinctive  promptings  of  the  spirit,  and 
so,  like  Mr.  Toscanini  in  Brahms's  symphonies, 
they  seemed  now  and  again  to  subdue  and  trans- 
mute to  themselves  the  manifest  matter,  manner  and 
will  of  the  composer.  Yet  a  limpid  and  lyrical 
Brahms  (so  far  as  might  be  even  at  the  hands  of 
"The  Flonzaleys")  had  timely  virtue  in  a  day  when 
too  many  Americans  counted  Teutonic  "interpreta- 
tions" among  the  finalities  of  music.  Like  re- 
proach awaited  Mr.  Betti  and  his  colleagues  when 
they  ventured  among  the  later  quartets  of  Beet- 
hoven. Plausibly,  they  groped  only  where  the 
[179] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

composer  also  sought  and  not  always  found,  pur- 
sued light  where  he  had  left  obscurity — and  then 
made  rich  amends  when  they  rose  to  the  exalta- 
tion of  his  song  or  caught  the  fires  of  his  impas- 
sioned energies. 

This  progress  "The  Flonzaleys"  have  crowned 
with  their  revelation  of  the  chamber-music  of  our 
own  particular  and  fruitful  day.  The  quartets  of 
Debussy  and  Ravel,  for  example,  were  not  new  to 
most  ears  hearing  them  at  their  concerts.  Yet, 
there,  many  a  listener  perceived  as  for  the  first 
time  the  pith  and  point  of  the  harmonic  texture, 
the  pungent  or  the  subtle  play  of  the  instrumental 
voices,  the  rhythmic  elan  at  once  sustaining  and 
diversifying  the  tonal  progress,  the  fertility  of  de- 
vice, the  iridescent  imagery,  the  poised  mood 
that  seemed  in  those  days  of  discovery  to  give  music 
both  a  new  sensibility  and  a  new  precision.  It  was 
as  though  the  finesse  and  the  felicity,  the  perfect 
perception  and  the  perfect  plasticity  of  "The  Flon- 
zaleys" with  Mozart  had  renewed  themselves  with 
Debussy  and  Ravel;  as  though  such  little  masters 
of  style  with  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury had  been  bom  anew  and  as  fuUy  panoplied 
into  the  first  years  of  the  twentieth. 

Relatively,  however,  these  quartets  were  "stand- 
[180] 


CHAMBER-MUSIC 

ard  pieces"  which  "The  Flonzaleys"  might  only  en- 
rich and  refine.  Even  Reger  had  his  place,  di- 
minished though  it  now  be,  before  they  set  him — in 
specimen — in  their  repertory.  Rather,  their  pio- 
neering works  of  conviction  and  courage  have  been 
done  with  the  chamber-music  of  the  so-called  ultra- 
moderns — with  the  quartet  of  Schonberg,  the  quar- 
tet and  the  suite  of  Bloch,  the  miscellaneous  num- 
bers (as  the  old  phrase  went)  of  Stravinsky.  To 
"The  Flonzaleys"  it  has  been  no  concern  how  their 
public  might  receive  these  adventures.  If  it  was 
derisive  as  with  Stravinsky,  they  were  prone  to 
reproach  themselves,  in  warrantless  depreciation, 
rather  than  composer  or  audience.  If  it  was  re- 
ceptive as  with  Schonberg,  they  rejoiced  in  the  just 
deserts  of  the  music.  If  their  public  heard,  stirred 
and  wondering,  as  with  Bloch,  sufficient  unto  the 
day  was  the  return  thereof.  Enough  that  in  their 
judgment  all  these  pieces  deserved  performance; 
that  they  had  spared  not  in  the  pains  of  prepara- 
tion ;  that  they  had  served  the  new  no  less  zealously 
than  the  old;  that  they  had  fulfilled  the  high  obli- 
gation of  their  prestige  to  the  mistrusted  music  of 
their  own  time.  Artists'  honor,  loyalties,  self -sub- 
ordination, may  hardly  go  further.  So  also  have 
"The  Flonzaleys"  ministered  to  the  lesser  lights  of 
[181] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

music  in  their  own  day.  They  have  found  room  for 
Griflfes,  for  Milhaud,  for  the  little  known  Belgians, 
for  overlooked  Parisians.  Before  long,  with  their 
present  zest  for  discovery,  they  may  descry  the 
ascendant  Italians,  the  risen  English.  As  for  us 
Americans,  Mr.  Loeffler  has  but  to  write  a  chamber- 
piece  to  lay  it  in  their  hands. 

For  a  decade  and  more  the  works  of  "The  Flon- 
zaleys"  have  thus  been  the  works — Mrs.  Coo- 
lidge's  Berkshire  festivals  aside — of  chamber- 
music  in  America.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  Kneisel 
Quartet  preceded  them,  opened  the  way  and 
smoothed  it.  The  misfortune  of  the  Kneisel  Quar- 
tet, however,  was  to  decline  from  merit  to  medioc- 
rity, to  chill  a  public  they  had  themselves  warmed, 
to  leave  it  eager  for  the  fervors  and  the  felicities 
of  "The  Flonzaleys."  Slowly  Mr.  Betti  and  his 
companions  won  their  deserts,  thrice  familiar  as 
their  quality  now  seems;  yet  no  less  firmly  they 
have  maintained,  amplified,  advanced  it.  As  many 
cities  as  will  have  them  may  now  take  recurring 
pleasure  in  them — so  long  as  they  do  not  overtax 
jealously  guarded  powers,  relax  cherished  stand- 
ards, disturb  necessary  leisures,  exhaust  zest  into 
routine.  "The  Flonzaleys"  began  in  artistic  right- 
[182] 


CHAMBER-MUSIC 

eousness.  In  the  fullness  of  fame  and  vogue  they 
have  unremittingly  maintained  it.  To  do  so  is 
not  yet  common  record  in  the  annals  of  musicians 
in  America. 


[183] 


II.    The  Zestful  Londoners 

The  London  String  Quartet  came  as  a  revelation 
to  American  audiences  long  accustomed  to  no  other 
standards  than  those  of  "The  Flonzaleys."  The 
Londoners  were  novel;  they  were  also  and  mani- 
festly different.  They  struck  an  emotional  fire  in 
their  playing  while  "The  Flonzaleys"  were  content 
with  a  warm  glow.  They  sought  opulence  while  the 
older  group  seeks,  and  finds,  lucidity,  elegance, 
sensuous  contour. 

Shrewdly  and  wisely,  withal,  Mr.  Levey,  Mr. 
Petre,  Mr.  Warner  and  Mr.  Warwick  preferred  to 
come  overseas  unheralded.  Even  those  whose  job 
it  is  to  scan  the  reviews  of  concerts  in  London  news- 
papers little  anticipated  their  quality.  Possibly 
familiarity  had  accustomed  the  British  reviewers 
to  the  signal  virtues  of  the  quartet;  whereas  in 
America  they  fell  fresh,  clear  and  warm  upon 
newly  listening  but  hardly  unexacting  ears.  They 
heard  an  exceeding  warmth  of  tone,  full-bodied, 
rich  of  pile  and  texture,  brightly  colored  and,  in 
moments  of  ardent  expression,  charged  with  deep 
[184] 


CHAMBER. MUSIC 

and  glowing  beauty.  Yet  not  a  delicate  modula- 
tion, an  incidental  figure  escaped  the  discerning 
four  as  they  wove  and  proportioned  the  web  of  the 
music.  When  that  web  parted  into  strands,  they  set 
them  in  clear  tracery;  they  spun  no  less  the  finest 
gossamers  of  tone.  Only  now  and  then  did  swift 
and  emphatic  measures  beguile  them — and  then 
for  a  bare  moment — out  of  euphony  into  sharpness. 
At  ease  they  could  be  as  fleet-fingered  as  the  com- 
poser bids  them  in  the  presto  of  the  second  quartet 
of  Beethoven's  familiar  Opus  59,  while  their  more 
sparkling  gradients  of  tone  ascended  or  descend- 
ed, outspreading  or  curling  away.  They  could  be 
as  square-cut  and  sonorous,  too,  as  Beethoven  or 
any  other  Composer  enjoined.  Their  twentieth-cen- 
tury sense  of  timbres  helped  them  to  individualize 
voices — perhaps  even  beyond  Beethoven's  young 
imaginings.  Above  all,  to  the  matings  and  the 
partings  of  the  four  instruments,  to  their  conversa- 
tions grave  or  gay,  to  single  speech,  to  variations 
here,  to  full  harmony  there,  the  Londoners  brought 
an  air  of  impulse — the  composer's,  their  own,  the 
audience's  even  (for  so  their  hearers  shared  the 
performance).  They  apprehended  clearly  the 
music  in  hand;  they  repaced  and  shaped  it  divin- 
ingly,  with  reciprocal  sense  of  pregnant  phrase 
[185] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

and  kindling  rhythm.  Cool  heads,  warm  hearts 
and  quick  energies  guided  and  spurred  them. 
Their  own  zest  gave  zest  to  their  audiences. 
The  Londoners  recall  "The  Kneisels"  in  their  first 
and  golden  prime;  they  renew  the  high  tradition 
descended  from  the  best  days  of  Joachim's  quar- 
tets. 


[186] 


vn 

A  DISEUSE 


I.      YVETTE  GUILBERT THE  ArTS  EpITOMIZED 

IN  Yvette  Guilbert  are  epitomized  a  hundred  arts 
of  a  hundred  players.  She  is  the  mistress  of 
a  diction  that  the  illustrious  of  the  Comedie 
itself  may  not  excel  in  polished  perfections  or 
even  match  in  imparting  vividness.  She  is  capable 
to  this  day  of  sweeps  of  pose  and  of  graces  of  pose 
that  Pavlowa  might  praise;  the  play  of  her  tones, 
in  her  best  years,  ranged  the  long  gamut  of  picture 
and  tale,  static  moods  or  released  emotions  that  the 
pieces  on  her  programs  exacted.  Even  now  they 
are  incomparable  for  such  purpose  except  for 
the  instant  when  they  must  be  the  speech  of  pure 
song.  At  one  moment  her  tongue  is  bitter  with  the 
harsh  satire  of  a  mediaeval  monk  or  poet,  at  an- 
other it  is  salty  with  serio-comic  ironies.  At  a 
third  it  speaks  the  exalted  speech  of  transfiguring 
and  upswelling  vision.  At  a  fourth  it  tells  a  tale 
as  though  it  were  creating  it  from  sight  and  sound. 
At  a  fifth  it  is  merry  with  gay  prattle,  and  so  on- 
ward through  a  list  that  might  make  the  thirty-nine 
[189] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

articles  of  a  speech  perfectly  attuned  to  as  many 
matters. 

As  various  is  the  play  of  eyes  no  less  eloquent, 
of  features  that  seem  to  etch  upon  themselves  what 
that  tongue  speaks,  or  yet  oftener  what  lies  behind 
its  sayings.  Prompting  and  guiding  all  these  means 
are  intelligence  and  spirit,  as  acute,  fine  and 
many-sided  as  they  are  alert  and  quenchless.  Trag- 
edy may  deepen  both  tone  and  feature,  comedy  may 
brighten  them,  irony  often  creases  them,  wit  smiles 
over  them,  the  intuition  which  is  close  to  genius 
often  enhances  them. 

A  characteristic  program  of  Mme.  Guilbert 
will  include  a  few  little  pieces  of  the  time  of  Marie 
Antoinette — "Bergers  and  Musettes  of  the  Little 
Trianon,"  she  calls  them.  Possibly  Marie  sang 
them  herself  when  she  and  her  demoiselles  d'hon- 
neur  dallied  beside  the  temples  and  the  fountains 
in  the  groves  of  the  garden.  Perhaps  an  attending 
courtier  with  a  voice  and  a  knack  at  elegant  song, 
sang  them  to  her  while  the  company  listened,  as 
in  Lancret's  and  Watteau's  pictures,  in  discreet 
attitudes,  with  a  becoming  air  of  melancholy. 
Whatever  the  original  circumstances  they  were 
prettily  artifical  ditties  that  warned  an  imaginary 
Phyllis  against  the  inconstancy  of  shepherd  swains, 
[190] 


A   DISEUSE 

that  sang  the  charms  and  accomplishments  of  a 
"cousinette" ;  that  spoke  a  young  girl's  longings 
"for  marriage  and  the  married  state."  And  with 
such  songs  Mme.  Guilbert  can  summon  the  mood 
and  manner,  touch  artifice  with  artifice  and  add 
grace  to  grace.  Elegant  longing  and  sentimental 
melancholy,  with  the  faintest  spice  of  pretending, 
might  go  no  farther. 

And  then  will  come  pieces  of  robuster  stuff, 
of  franker  flavor  and  more  human  quality  in  which 
it  is  easy  to  prefer  her.  They  will  narrate  stories 
of  the  monks  whom,  from  the  middle  ages  on,  the 
tellers  of  folk  tales  and  the  makers  of  folk  verse 
have  not  much  loved.  They  would  make  them 
churlish  and  clownish,  avaricious  and  libidinous, 
knaves  and  hypocrites  unredeemed.  Upon  such 
songs  Mme.  Yvette  will  lavish  all  her  skill  of  ironic 
innuendo.  Gayly  she  keeps  company  with  the  par- 
ticular monk  who  descended  upon  the  good  woman 
of  the  house,  begged  for  shelter  and  warmth,  and 
then  for  bed  and  board,  and  finally  for  the  lady 
herself.  She  will  mock  him  to  his  face;  perhaps 
he  had  his  wicked  will;  perhaps  he  failed  of  it; 
anyhow  the  answer  is  written  in  the  intonations  that 
she  gives  the  deriding  little  refrain  and  that  make 
[191] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

doubt  (as  it  often  is)  piquancy.  Boccaccio  might 
have  told  the  tale  with  like  smiling  gusto. 

Next  perhaps  stand  songs  smacking  in  their  turn 
as  heartily  and  broadly  of  the  rude  tongues,  the 
outspoken  impulses,  the  rough  fooleries,  the  blunt, 
sordid  give-and-take  of  the  peasant  folk  of  the 
French  country-side,  as  do  Maupassant's  tales  of 
Normandy  farms.  To  these  Mme.  Guilbert  can 
summon  in  her  tones  not  only  the  two  tongues  but 
also  the  two  personages  of  the  dialogued  pieces, 
and  whether  monk  or  peasant  is  the  target,  diver- 
sify the  refrains  with  arch  and  apt  mockery. 

At  the  other  extreme  Mme.  Guilbert  can  be  at 
will  both  tender  and  humble,  puissant  and  opulent. 
Recall  her  Mary  Magdalen  in  Oriental  splendor 
of  presence  and  possessions  going  from  door  to 
door,  yet  in  humility.  Neither  great  kings,  rich 
merchants  nor  even  the  common  hangman  had  pity 
or  place  for  her.  Yet  when  she  came  to  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  he  repulsed  her  not,  but  spoke  gentle 
words  of  pardon  and  compassion.  Then  in  Mme. 
Guilbert's  tones  is  the  beauty  of  the  merciful  and 
of  the  pure  in  heart  that  Rostand,  with  all  the  re- 
sources of  the  theater  to  serve  him,  hardly  com- 
passed so  fully  in  like  scene  of  "La  Samaritaine." 
For  contrast  is  Mme.  Guilbert's  other  Mary,  the 
[192] 


A   DISEUSE 

mother  of  Jesus,  who  went  from  tavern  to  tavern 
upon  the  holy  night  in  Bethlehem  seeking  the  shel- 
ter that  at  last  a  manger  gave.  Again  Mary  and 
Joseph  speak  in  her  tones;  again  the  inn-folk  make 
answer;  the  distant  bells  chime;  and  on  the  expect- 
ant stroke  of  midnight — in  the  diseuse*s  deepest 
tones  and  intensest  gesture,  in  the  outpouring,  as 
it  seems,  of  all  the  forces  of  her  spirit — comes 
the  acclaiming  of  the  newborn  Savior  of  Men. 


[193] 


VIII 
DANCERS 


I.    The  Russians  Blending  the  Arts 

RUSSIAN  ballets,  written,  mounted  and 
danced  by  Russians  and  Russian  operas 
sung  in  Russian  by  Russians  were  a  theat- 
rical fashion  and  almost  a  theatrical  passion  of 
the  twentieth  century  in  Western  Europe  until  the 
late  war  shattered  habits  and  dispersed  pastimes. 
Spring  after  spring,  through  May  and  a  part  of 
June,  Mr.  Diaghileflf's  Russian  ballet  danced  in 
Paris.  Summer  after  summer  from  the  end  of 
June  through  July  it  danced  in  London.  Often  a 
company  for  opera,  completely  Russian  except  in 
the  orchestra,  accompanied  it  for  the  performance 
of  Russian  operas  in  the  original  text  and  in  trap- 
pings from  Moscow  and  Petrograd.  Alike  for 
the  ballets  and  the  operas,  audiences  filled  every 
place  in  very  large  theaters  at  very  .high  prices. 
A  part  of  these  audiences  assembled  because  it 
was  the  fashion  to  see  Russian  ballets  and  hear 
Russian  operas.  As  large  a  part  gathered  be- 
cause in  dancing,  miming  and  pictorial  aspect 
the  ballets  surpassed  any  known  to  the  con- 
[197] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

temporary  stage,  and  because  the  music  yielded 
them  new,  strange,  and  very  penetrating  sensations. 
In  parquet  and  in  gallery,  Americans  were  nu- 
merous in  these  audiences  and  for  several  years 
before  the  Ballet  came  to  America,  they,  as  eye-and- 
ear-witnesses,  recounted  to  their  coimtrymen  these 
Russian  glories.  In  turn,  the  correspondents  in 
Paris  and  London  of  American  newspapers  wrote 
much  about  the  ballets  and  operas.  The  names  of 
Nijinsky  and  Karsavina,  the  chief  dancers,  were 
repeated  many  times  beyond  the  Atlantic;  and 
even  that  of  Fokine,  producer  of  nearly  all  these 
ballets  and  inventor  of  many  of  them,  was  not  un- 
known over  sea. 

In  the  ordinary  course  of  westward  progress,  the 
Russian  Ballet,  as  it  was  speedily  called  (as  if 
there  were  no  other  in  its  own  country),  should 
have  visited  the  United  States  long  before  it  did. 
It  tarried  elsewhere  because  whenever  such  an  ex- 
pedition was  proposed  it  exacted  what  seemed 
to  American  managers  impossible  terms.  When- 
ever negotiations  began  Mr.  Diaghileff,  who  had 
final  responsibility  and  authority  over  all  that  it 
undertook,  insisted  that  his  company  must  dance 
in  America  in  very  large  theaters  to  very  large  au- 
diences at  very  high  prices,  as  it  had  in  Europe. 
[198] 


DANCERS 

It  was  accustomed  to  dance  no  more  than  four 
times  a  week,  it  must  be  engaged  in  toto;  it  was 
hard  to  convince  him  that  New  York,  Boston  and 
Chicago  could  provide  orchestras  worthy  of  his 
dancers. 

But  the  war  and  its  consequences  altered  many- 
things  in  Europe — among  them,  evidently,  the 
mind  of  Mr.  Diaghileff.  Accordingly  he  looked 
to  America  with  a  kindly,  even  a  longing  eye; 
he  modified  his  demands  to  "suit  the  times,"  and 
agreed  readily  to  the  reasonable  terms  upon  which 
the  Russian  Ballet  made  its  first  American  tour. 
It  brought  its  full  forces,  with  the  exception  of 
Karsavina,  the  chief  dancer  on  the  feminine  side, 
less  distinguished  and  less  individual  than  her 
predecessor,  Anna  Pavlowa,  but  none  the  less  a 
dancer  who  rises  high  in  the  second  rank.  It  failed 
also  to  bring  Fokine,  who  has  since  exemplified 
here  a  rare  sense  of  beautiful  and  significant 
motion,  keen  imagination  and  feeling  playing 
through  it,  and  the  pictorial,  elastic,  illusive  and 
seemingly  easy  coodination  of  all  the  elements  in 
an  intricate  spectacle.  In  our  day  no  such  imagina- 
tion as  his  has  worked  with  the  ballet  on  the  actual 
stage  to  such  resulting  beauty.  Beyond  any 
individual  dancer,  he  made  Mr.  Diaghileff's  bal- 
[199] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

let  what  it  was.  It  did  bring  Nijinsky,  who,  what- 
ever his  idiosyncrasies  and  effeminacies,  then  ex- 
celled all  the  dancers  of  his  sex  in  imaginative 
variety,  felicitous  grace  and  airy  lightness  of 
motion. 

Nijinsky  and  Fokine  aside,  the  salient  distinc- 
tion of  the  Russian  Ballet  was — and  is — its  en- 
semble— its  dancing  en  masse  or  in  divided  and 
subdivided  groups  wherein  each  dancer  kept  clear 
individuality,  yet  was  a  contributing  part  to  an 
adroitly  ordered  but  seemingly  spontaneous  whole. 
The  least  of  the  dancers  danced  with  sense  of  the 
mimed  drama,  of  the  momentary  picture,  as  well 
as  of  rh)ihmed  steps  and  movements.  These  bal- 
lets, moreover,  moved  against  scenery  and  were 
clothed  with  costumes  that  were  a  revelation  in 
color  to  the  American  eye.  Bakst,  unsurpassed 
master  then  of  the  richness  and  the  power  of  color 
on  the  stage,  ample  and  free  of  design,  impres- 
sionistic often  in  artistic  procedure,  was  the 
author  of  most  of  the  scenery  and  costumes.  A  few 
of  the  younger  artists  of  the  theater  made  the  rest. 

As  the  austere  reviewers  of  Paris  and  London 

affirmed,  it  is  true  that  the  Russian  Ballet  addressed 

itself  to  the  imagination  and  the  emotions  through 

the  eye  rather  than  through  the  ear,  and  that  in 

[200] 


DANCERS 

some  of  its  pieces  it  subordinated  the  music  to 
the  spectacle.  On  the  other  hand,  it  persuaded  the 
fastidious  Debussy  and  the  exacting  Strauss  to 
write  for  it;  in  its  repertory  was  Ravel's  most  im- 
aginative and  vivid  music,  the  ballet  of  "Daphnis 
and  Chloe";  and  it  gave  to  Stravinsky  almost  the 
only  outlet  for  his  twin  faculties  of  marvelous  or- 
chestral dexterity  and  of  pictorial  and  character- 
izing suggestion  by  interval,  chord  and  rhythm. 

What  then,  were  the  essential  characteristics  that 
differentiated  the  Russian  Ballet,  like  Pavlowa's 
before  it,  from  the  other  dancing  we  in  America 
had  known?  That  these  Russians  danced  better — 
the  simplest  explanation — is  one  of  the  most  mis- 
leading, for  the  elusive  difference  does  not  lie  in 
technique.  Certainly  their  technique  was  expert; 
all  of  them  did  masterful  things  with  no  appear- 
ance of  effort,  and  many  sorts  of  masterful 
things.  But  technique  is  no  more  the  source 
of  the  highest  pleasure  in  dancing  than  it  is 
in  painting,  in  music,  or  any  other  of  the  arts. 
It  is  a  channel  of  communication;  it  is  the  means 
by  which  the  artistic  idea  comes  from  the  mind 
of  the  creator  to  the  senses  of  the  spectator.  The 
Russians,  in  fact,  have  so  long  since  brought  their 
technique  of  dancing,  their  command  of  their 
[201] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

bodies,  their  instinct  for  balance,  for  energy  with- 
out exertion,  to  the  highest  point  that  they  have 
been  able  to  develop  an  art  for  which  that  tech- 
nique exists — namely,  the  conveyance  of  choreo- 
graphic ideas.  Mr.  Diaghileff's  Russians  never* 
escaped  from  their  subjection  to  ideas — and, 
moreover,  to  artistic  ideas;  ideas,  that  is,  conceived 
at  a  high  pitch  of  emotional  intelligence. 

It  was,  in  fact,  not  in  the  technical  skill  of  the 
dancing,  but  in  the  variety  and  imaginative  quality 
of  those  ideas  that  the  true  individuality  of  the  Rus- 
sian Ballet  stood  revealed.  Take,  for  example,  the 
dances  from  "Prince  Igor" — in  itself  a  rather 
tedious  opera,  founded  on  a  turgid  ballad  that  was 
foisted  on  Russian  literature  by  an  eighteenth-cen- 
tury forger  and  has  been  allowed  to  stay  there  to 
avoid  a  scandal.  How  astutely  every  means 
that  the  theater  offers  was  utilized  to  produce 
the  desired  effect:  the  menace  of  the  coming  cloud 
of  barbarians  that  is  to  lie  for  centuries  on  the 
desolate  face  of  Russia  (for  we  are  in  the  camp 
of  the  Polovtsians,  forerunners  of  the  great  in- 
vasion) ;  not  the  blusterings  of  Tamburlaine  the 
Great,  but  the  quiet  vigor,  half  melancholy,  half 
playful,  of  a  tribe  that  is  itself  but  a  little  unit  in 
the  swarm.  To  the  eye  open  the  infinite  horizons 
[202] 


DANCERS 

of  the  steppe,  with  the  line  of  the  burial  tumuli 
stretching  away  to  endless  times  and  places;  down 
the  centuries,  into  Siberia.  On  the  ear  sounds  the 
long-drawn,  iterant  music  (Borodin  drew  his 
themes  from  Tartar-Mongol  sources).  The  women 
crouch,  unconscious  of  themselves,  or  rise  and 
stretch  lazy  limbs,  and  in  the  end  fling  themselves 
carelessly  prone  when  their  dance  is  over.  To 
them  succeeds  the  savage-joyful  panther-leaping  of 
the  men ;  the  stamping  feet  and  quick  nerve-racking 
beat  of  the  drum;  and,  more  threatening  than  all, 
the  gamboling  of  the  boys,  like  kittens  unwit- 
tingly preparing  themselves  for  the  future  chase. 

Again  in  Schumann's  "Carnaval"  was  a  whole 
new  range  of  ideas — a  series  of  purely  musical 
ideas,  literary  or  dramatic,  it  is  true,  in  general 
scheme — for  Schumann  himself  provided  the  main 
verbal  notions.  Camaval,  Pierrot,  Columbine, 
Eusebius,  Florestan — but  the  inspiration  of  the 
details  was  drawn  from  music,  and  certain  move- 
ments and  gestures  of  the  Russian  dancers,  certain 
trippings  and  stridings  conveyed  humorous  fancies 
which  can  be  conveyed  only  by  music  and  dancing 
and  which  cannot  be  put  into  words.  This  is  pure 
choreography,  mimed  comment,  abstracted  from 
all  drama  and  letters. 

[203] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

On  the  other  hand,  as  against  the  expression  of 
a  literary-historical  idea  as  in  "Prince  Igor,"  or 
the  expression  of  a  half -romantic,  half -musical  idea 
as  in  "Carnaval,"  the  Russians  could  gain  the 
illusion  of  remote  and  detached  beauty.  In  De- 
bussy's "L'Apres-midi  d'un  Faune,"  for  example, 
there  could  be  no  possible  illusion  of  reality;  nor 
yet  again  the  illusion  of  pure  fantasy  as  in 
"Les  Sylphides."  The  new  intent  was  a  beauty  of 
ancient  scene  and  vesture,  of  imagined  beings  as 
they  stirred  in  Hellenic  fancy,  and  a  beauty,  like- 
wise, of  the  sensations — sensations  Hellenic  per- 
haps, but  quite  as  much  of  the  place  and  time  of 
Mallarme  and  Debussy,  the  poet  and  the  composer 
— that  faun  and  nymphs  receive  one  from  another 
in  the  scheme  of  verse,  music  and  mimed  episode. 
Faun  and  nymphs  must  be  as  visualized  figments 
of  the  stimulated  imagination  rather  than  mimes  in 
the  flesh ;  their  impulses — for  they  are  not  so  much 
as  moods — must  seem  wisps  of  sensation,  flicking 
the  spectator's  imagination.  Visualized  they  must 
be  as  figures  twining  about  the  ancient  vase  upon 
which  they  have  been  painted,  with  interlocking 
and  angular  arms;  or  moving  their  bodies,  their 
draperies,  their  hands  and  heads  as  though  they 
were  of  a  sudden  released  from  the  static  instant  in 
[204] 


DANCERS 

which  the  painter  had  arrested  them.  Under  such 
intent  and  necessity  there  is  no  dancing  "L'Apres- 
Midi,"  there  is  no  miming  it,  there  is  no  rhyth- 
ming  it.  The  players  may  only  accent  their  ges- 
tures and  their  glances  and  their  movements  as  the 
music  is  accented,  and  outline  their  poses  to  its 
contours  within  their  steadfast  illusion  of  the 
figures  of  vase-painting.  So  doing,  the  Russians 
made  this  accent  a  new  means  of  expression  that 
the  art  of  visualization  in  the  theater  had  hitherto 
little  known  or  practiced;  so  doing  they  visual- 
ized in  the  round  and  in  living  beings  a  beauty 
of  line  and  color  that  had  hitherto  been  only  of 
inanimate  surfaces;  so  doing  they  enriched  the 
theater  with  a  strange  and  rarefied  art  that  it 
knew  not  in  its  perfection  until  the  day  when 
*'L'Apres-Midi"  was  set  upon  the  stage.  The  Rus- 
sians further  enriched  it,  and  in  other  ways,  with 
Debussy's  "Jeux"  and  Stravinsky's  "Sacre  de 
Printemps"  but  Mr.  Diaghileff  did  not  dare  risk 
them  upon  a  public  like  ours,  little  schooled  in 
the  elements — to  say  nothing  of  the  sophistications 
— of  the  mimetic  arts. 

"Of  pure  mimesis — the  imitation  of  actual  ma- 
terial movements — ^there  was  but  little  in  the  Rus- 
sian Ballet.    Still  less  was  there  of  convention,  that 
[205] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

mysterious  language  of  gestures  with  which  ballet- 
masters  are  wont  to  darken  the  mind  of  the  specta- 
tor. Neither  did  it  seek  to  entertain  us  by  the  mere 
portrayal  of  such  simple  matters  as  love,  invita- 
tion, refusal,  indignation  and  forgiveness.  To 
make  it  worthy  of  its  purpose  there  must  be 
some  individuality  in  the  emotions,  which  gives 
it  a  new  significance.  Pavlowa,  for  instance,  does 
not  so  much  imitate  the  movement  of  a  butterfly 
as  the  emotional  quality  of  a  butterfly-flight,  the 
sense  raised  in  our  minds  by  watching  it;  and 
then  it  is  not  an  ordinary  butterfly,  but  a  Grimm 
butterfly,  a  dream  butterfly,  a  butterfly  multiplied 
many  times  by  itself,  raised  as  it  were  to  the  Pav- 
lowa-th  power. 

"When  for  a  moment  the  Russians  are  confined 
to  mere  imitation — the  representation,  for  instance, 
of  the  joy  of  youth — they  catch  newly  expressive 
gestures,  such  as  that  wholly  childlike,  bold  swing- 
ing of  the  arms,  as  if  they  were  pinned  on  at  the 
shoulders.  In  all  ballet-dancing  there  is  a  dim 
attempt  to  represent  the  spiritual,  the  fantastical, 
by  means  of  the  material;  the  tiptoeing  and  the 
lifting-up  of  the  women  is  a  suggestion  of  the 
ethereal;  but  the  perfect  ease  and  grace  of  the 
Russians  enables  them  to  carry  this  to  a  far  higher 
[206] 


DANCERS 

point  than  any  others  have  done,  so  that  in  their 
suggestion  of  things  flying,  things  swimming,  things 
poised,  or  things  blown  in  the  wind,  the  sense  of 
the  material  passes  away  altogether. 

"The  art  of  the  older  ballet  turned  its  back  on 
life  and  on  all  the  other  arts  and  shut  itself  up  in 
a  narrow  circle  of  tradition.  According  to  the 
old  method  of  producing  a  ballet,  the  ballet-master 
composed  his  dances  by  combining  certain  well- 
established  movements  and  poses,  and  for  his 
mimetic  scenes  he  used  a  conventional  system  of 
gesticulation,  and  endeavored  by  gestures  of  the 
dancers'  hands  according  to  established  rules  to 
convey  the  plot  of  the  ballet  to  the  spectator.  Not 
to  form  combinations  of  ready-made  and  estab- 
lished dance-steps,  but  to  create  in  each  case  a  new 
form  corresponding  to  the  subject,  the  most  ex- 
pressive form  possible  for  the  representation  of  the 
period,  the  character  and  the  idea  represented — 
that  was  and  is  the  first  rule  of  the  Russians  under 
DiaghilefF. 

"The  second  rule  is  that  dancing  and  mimetic 
gesture  have  no  meaning  in  a  ballet  unless  they 
serve  as  an  expression  of  its  dramatic  action,  and 
they  must  not  be  used  as  a  mere  divertissement 
or  entertainment,  having  no  connection  with  the 
[207] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

scheme  of  the  whole  ballet.  The  third  rule  is  that 
the  new  ballet  admits  the  use  of  conventional  ges- 
ture only  where  it  is  required  by  the  style  of  the 
ballet,  and  in  all  other  cases  endeavors  to  replace 
gestures  of  the  hands  by  mimesis  of  the  whole 
body.  Man  can  be  and  should  be  expressive  from 
head  to  foot. 

"The  fourth  rule  is  the  expressiveness  of  groups 
and  of  ensemble  dancing.  In  the  older  ballet  the 
dancers  were  ranged  in  groups  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  ornament,  and  the  ballet-master  was  not 
concerned  with  the  expression  of  any  sentiment 
in  groups  of  characters  or  in  ensemble  dances. 
The  new  ballet,  on  the  other  hand,  in  developing 
the  principle  of  expressiveness,  advances  from  the 
expressiveness  of  the  face  to  the  expressiveness  of 
the  whole  body,  and  from  the  expressiveness  of  the 
individual  body  to  the  expressiveness  of  a  group  of 
bodies  and  the  expressiveness  of  the  combined  danc- 
ing of  a  crowd. 

"The  fifth  rule  is  the  alliance  of  dancing  with 
other  arts.  The  new  ballet,  refusing  to  be  the  slave 
either  of  music  or  of  scenic  decoration,  and  recog- 
nizing the  alliance  of  the  arts  only  on  the  condi- 
tion of  complete  equality,  allows  perfect  freedom 
both  to  the  scenic  artist  and  to  the  musician.  In 
[208] 


DANCERS 

contradistinction  to  the  older  ballet  it  does  not  de- 
mand 'ballet  music'  of  the  composer  as  an  accom- 
paniment to  dancing;  it  accepts  music  of  every 
kind,  provided  only  that  it  is  good  and  expressive. 
It  does  not  demand  of  the  scenic  artist  that  he 
should  array  the  ballerina  in  short  skirts  and 
pink  slippers.  It  does  not  impose  any  specific 
'ballet'  conditions  on  the  composer  or  the  decora- 
tive artist,  but  gives  complete  liberty  to  their  crea- 
tive powers."  * 

♦  Fr-om  the  London  Times  passim. 


[209] 


II.    The  Poetry  of  Pavlowa 

It  was  the  DiaghilefF  Ballet  that  first  brought 
Pavlowa  to  Western  Europe  from  the  Russia 
where  she  was  high-placed  ballerina  in  imperial 
opera  houses.  A  few  years  later  she  assembled  a 
company,  including  Michael  Mordkin,  and  began 
to  produce  ballets  in  her  own  right.  Under 
these  circumstances  she  gave  to  America  the 
first  important  glimpse  of  the  beauties  of  the  Rus- 
sian ballet  and  its  coordinating  arts.  She  has  since 
become  ceaseless  wanderer  on  the  face  of  the  globe, 
carrying  with  her  the  beauty  of  the  dance  as  it 
has  not  manifested  itself  in  any  one  person  in  our 
day. 

Year  after  year  Pavlowa  has  revealed  to  us  the 
range  of  her  resources,  the  diversity  of  her  accom- 
plishment, technical  and  pictorial,  imaginative  and 
emotional.  She  has  run  the  whole  gamut  of  tech- 
nical means  and  technical  achievement.  It  is  not 
merely  that  Pavlowa  accomplishes  every  feat  of 
technical  virtuosity  with  exceeding  plasticity,  with 
exceeding  sureness,  with  an  air,  almost,  of  sim- 
[210] 


DANCERS 

plicity  in  the  doing  of  the  intricate  and  of  spon- 
taneity in  the  compassing  of  the  involved.  It  is 
rather  that  Pavlowa  gives  to  these  feats  of  high 
technique  a  beauty  of  line  in  swift  and  rhythmed 
motion  that  makes  them  seem  to  spring  out  of  the 
imagination  in  themselves,  like  the  emotion  of  ab- 
solute music.  She  falls  into  a  pose;  the  technician 
can  derive  from  it  on  the  instant  one  or  the 
other  classic  "position";  yet  the  eye  sees  first  and 
feels  longest  the  exquisite  beauty  of  line.  The  im- 
pression is  as  though  fluid  motion  were  arrested 
for  an  instant  to  expand  in  static  beauty,  as  the 
running  brook  halts  for  a  moment  to  make  a  sunlit 
pool.  Or  the  impression  and  emotion  are  of  the 
winged  lightness  of  the  movement,  the  blending  of 
each  one  of  its  parts  into  a  single  lovely  flash. 
Such  technique  has  impalpability;  it  is  like  air  in 
motion;  it  is  as  fluid  as  water;  as  swift  as  fire.  Here 
is  the  beauty  of  motion  in  its  distilled  essence,  as 
indefinable  by  word  as  the  absolute  distilled  beauty 
of  music,  but  as  recognizable  and  real — more  real 
even  than  reality. 

The  nearest  approximation  to  the  classic  bal- 
let, as  of  old  it  went  in  the  capitals  of  Central 
and     Eastern     Europe,     came     to     the     present 
generation  of  our  stage  in  Pavlowa's  ballet-pan- 
[211] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

tomime  of  "The  Sleeping  Beauty."  There  was  the 
Russian  Ballet  of  Diaghileff  and  Nijinsky;  there  is, 
or  was,  the  Russian  Ballet  of  the  state  theaters  in 
Petrograd  and  Moscow.  The  one  was  the  handi- 
work of  innovators,  individualists,  seceders,  de- 
signed less  for  a  Russian  than  a  cosmopolitan  au- 
dience. It  mimed  quite  as  often  as  it  danced.  The 
other  exemplifies,  preserves  and  enriches  the  tra- 
dition that  hegan  when  the  first  French  and  Italian 
dancing  masters  were  summoned  from  the  West  to 
bring  their  method  with  them.  It  exalts  the  for- 
malism and  the  virtuosity  of  the  dance. 

"The  Sleeping  Beauty"  is  such  a  ballet.  Tschai- 
kowsky  finished  the  music  in  the  prime  of  his 
powers,  and,  as  his  friends  recall,  was  better  satis- 
fied with  it  than  with  anything  he  had  done  for  the 
theater.  As  the  tradition  prescribed  he  wrote  it 
to  an  appointed  scenario,  carefully  divided  and 
subdivided  into  the  number  of  measures  the  om- 
nipotent ballet-master  chose  to  allot  to  each  dance 
and  each  mimed  episode.  It  does  not  lack  the 
stately  graces  that  become  a  formal  and  somewhat 
rococo  ballet;  it  has  many  a  moment  of  lyric 
warmth  or  rhythmic  glow;  it  is  like  a  mirror  for 
the  varied  reflections  of  story  and  action. 

The  fable  is  the  familiar  folk-tale  of  the  lovely 
[212] 


DANCERS 

young  princess,  for  whose  hand  many  noble  youths 
sued,  who  was  protected  by  the  good  fairy,  yet 
was  cast  into  deep  sleep  in  the  forest  by  malign 
magic  and  there  lay  until  the  bravest  and  the  most 
devoted  of  her  suitors  wakened  her  and  re- 
stored her  to  human  love  and  happiness.  A  pale, 
transparent,  even  childlike  fable,  as  most  fables 
of  Russian  classic  ballets  are;  but  one  that  the 
dullest  may  not  misunderstand,  that  is  rich  in  op- 
portunities for  the  dancers  and  in  invitation  to  the 
decorators.  And  when  Bakst  set  to  the  designing 
of  the  backgroimds  and  costumes,  he  took  thought 
of  the  period  in  which  Perrault  wrote  his  fairy 
tales  and  of  the  great  rooms  and  formal  gardens  in 
which  his  readers  conned  them.  The  sobriety  and 
the  formalism  of  the  backgrounds,  the  unempha- 
sized  line  and  the  subdued  color  were  new  notes  in 
Bakst's  work  as  America  had  hitherto  known  him. 
Yet  it  kept  its  familiar  virtues  of  assimilation  of 
the  chosen  style,  of  assiduous  harmony  with  the 
matter,  manner  and  characteristic  suggestion  of 
the  appointed  ballet.  As  it  conventionalizes  the 
dance,  so  he  conventionalized  the  decoration.  In 
contrast  not  a  few  of  the  costumes  were  of  truly 
Bakstian  splendor  that  seemed  yet  more  splendid 
against  the  relatively  neutral  backgrounds. 
[213] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

And  according  to  the  prescriptions  of  the 
classic  ballet,  Pavlowa  herself  danced  in  the  tradi- 
tional dresses,  variously  colored,  of  a  prima  bal- 
lerina— ^billowing  skirt,  light  bodice  and  silken 
fleshings,  nearly  invisible.  Her  beauty  was  the 
beauty  of  her  own  dark  features,  of  her  darting 
arms  and  gossamer  fingers,  of  her  winged  feet,  of 
her  whole  slender,  sinewy,  alert  and  intent  body. 
Her  artistry  was  the  artistry  in  which  she  had  been 
schooled  and  become  perfect  in  the  days  of  her 
youth  in  Russia's  imperial  theaters.  It  shone 
through  all  the  technical  feats  that  the  ballet  ex- 
acted, shone  through  the  glamour  of  young  seren- 
ity and  surprise,  wonder  and  eagerness,  happiness 
and  affection  with  which  she  invested  them  as  be- 
came a  personage  who  was  a  fairy-book  princess 
before  she  was  past  mistress  of  the  adagios  and 
variations,  the  posings  and  flittings  of  the  classic 
dance.  Her  own  spirit  added  yet  another  man- 
tle. Once  more  she  was  a  creature  of  light  and 
air  who  made  a  transcendent  virtuosity,  a  flaw- 
less elegance,  a  perfect  sense  of  style  like  wreath- 
ing vapors  upon  the  watching  eyes  and  the  quick- 
ened imagination. 

Yet  Pavlowa's  artistry  can  be  as  contemporary 
as  it  can  be  classic.  Mile.  Genee  herself  was  not 
[214] 


DANCERS 

better  grounded  in  all  the  technical  aptitudes  of  the 
old  classical  ballet,  but  Pavlowa  prefers  to  use 
them  as  the  instruments  of  her  modernized  imagi- 
nation. Similarly  in  the  decoration  of  the  many 
stages  upon  which  she  dances,  she  follows  the  ways 
of  the  scenic  past  when  they  suit  the  music  and 
the  ballet  that  she  has  in  hand.  But  she  turns 
much  more  eagerly — if  she  is  minded  not  to  be 
careless — to  the  methods  and  the  fashions  of  the 
present  when  they  bid  fair  to  heighten  the  illusion 
that  she  seeks.  With  "The  Sleeping  Beauty,"  with 
"The  Magic  Flute,"  or  with  her  terpsichorean 
transcription  of  Weber's  "Invitation  to  the  Dance" 
she  is  content  with  backgrounds  of  the  traditional 
sort.  Passing  to  her  newer  "divertissements";  to 
a  highly  imaginative  ballet  of  the  present,  like  her 
version  of  Liszt's  "Preludes";  like  her  "Orien- 
tale" — made  from  a  patchwork  of  the  music  of 
Serov,  Musorgsky  and  Rimsky-Korsakov — she 
sets  around  them  decorations  in  the  more  modem 
fashion. 

"Orientale,"  like  its  forerunner,  'Thamar," 
was  bom  of  Russia  and  of  the  East  and  of  a  time 
that  liked  fierce  passions,  high  colorings,  vivid 
shapes,  and  sharp-set  music  in  the  theater  and  liked 
them  the  better  when  they  came  with  barbaric  tang. 
[215] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

Instead  of  a  neutral  setting,  the  play  of  Bakst's 
hot,  broad  color  over  a  close-walled  Oriental  cham- 
ber, remote,  solitary,  perfimie-laden,  voluptuous 
in  its  every  suggestion.  Instead  of  merely  inci- 
dental dresses,  costumes  that  were  part  and  parcel 
of  this  play  of  color  and  implication.  Instead  of 
conventionalized  music,  music  out  of  the  Russians 
that  was  as  highly  colored  as  the  settings,  that  ran 
to  sharp,  wild  rhythms,  that  bore  passion  and 
whipped  it.  Instead  of  the  play  of  pretty  sentiment 
and  light  humor,  the  enchantress  waiting  for  her 
passing  prey,  devoured  with  desire  for  it,  pur- 
suing it  with  fierce  and  sensual  temptation,  almost 
possessing  it,  and  indomitable  still  when  it  slips 
from  her — a  mimodrama  with  passion  and  fate 
at  odds  within  it;  a  mimodrama  in  which  every 
means  was  shaped  to  the  stark  and  graphic  end. 

Bakst  carried  the  eye  and  the  imagination  into 
the  enchantress's  chamber.  Her  women  danced 
there  in  the  languor  of  the  Orient.  Her  serpent- 
like priest  wrought  his  incantations  over  his  per- 
fumed jar.  And  she  lay  and  watched  and  in  im- 
agination devoured  the  object  of  her  desire. 
Chance  brought  him — the  younger  warrior — to  her 
door.  Her  soldiers  led  him  within.  Upon  him  she 
plied  all  the  fierceness  of  her  fascination.  Her 
[216] 


DANCERS 

women  danced  and  now  less  in  languor  than  in 
frenzy;  her  magician  wrought  his  spells;  her  sol- 
diers in  rude  dances  kindled  his  native  wildness. 
She  herself  sprang  to  lead  all  this  rout.  The  fire 
of  her  passion  almost  caught  him  into  it  to  con- 
sume him.  His  talisman  saved  him.  Baffled  but 
still  waiting  indomitable,  she  returned  to  her  couch 
and  her  vision  of  new  prey.  Upon  the  room  settled 
again  the  heavy  stillness,  the  fateful  solitude. 

Pavlowa  mimed  and  danced  the  enchantress.  At 
first  and  as  it  seemed  for  long,  she  had  only  to  vis- 
ualize in  the  upturned  face  and  the  outstretched 
body  the  woman  waiting  tigress-like  for  her  prey, 
and  preying  upon  herself  in  the  fierceness  of  her 
anticipation.  Here  was  Pavlowa's  mastery  of  sus- 
tained and  static  projection  not  merely  of  a  vivid 
being  but  of  the  fires  tliat  smoldered  within  it. 
The  sight  of  the  young  warrior  was  like  the  outward 
flare  of  them  in  the  wind  of  the  passion.  Perhaps, 
when  she  set  to  the  dancing  and  the  miming  of  the 
enchantress,  tempting  and  almost  possessing,  she 
used  too  often  the  sharp  angular  gesture  and  move- 
ment which  were  becoming  an  idiosyncrasy  of  the 
newer  Russian  dancing.  Yet  when  she  so  used  it, 
she  plied  it  with  clear  purpose  and  not  as  the  seem- 
ing mannerism  that  Nijinsky  so  ardently  cultivated. 
[217] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

This  gesture  and  this  motion  were  as  stark  and 
fierce,  as  hard  and  burning  as  the  passion  behind. 
By  that  passion  she  would  master  and  devour  its 
object.  She  did  not  caress;  she  commanded. 
Power  was  in  the  miming  and  savagery  in  the 
dance.  Then  came  the  climax  when  the  hand  is 
almost  upon  the  prey,  and  fierce  anticipation 
played  out  of  her  graphic  glance  and  her  dancing 
body.  Then  the  moment  of  fierce  bewilderment 
when  the  warrior  baffles  her.  Finally,  the  slow 
sinking,  with  the  very  voice  and  line  of  the  music, 
into  the  waiting,  indomitable  and  devouring. 
Miming  of  such  imagination  and  intensity,  so  stark, 
so  elemental,  is  revelation  of  the  other  Pavlowa — 
of  the  actress  of  passion  and  power,  mate  and  foil 
to  the  wraith,  the  white  flame,  of  the  dance. 


[218] 


III.    Manifold  Nijinsky 

Like  Pavlowa,  Nijinsky  was  no  contented  tech- 
nician of  the  dance,  superlatively  as  he  could  sum- 
mon the  older  virtuosity  in  such  pieces  in  the  Rus- 
sian Ballet's  repertory  as  "The  Enchanted  Prin- 
cess" or,  in  a  measure,  the  quasi-idyllic  "Spectre 
de  la  Rose."  He  was  schooled  in  it  for  nine  years, 
as  is  every  Russian  dancer;  he  practiced  it  for 
years  afterward  in  the  imperial  theaters  before  a 
public  more  expert  and  insistent  with  these  tech- 
nical felicities  than  any  other  in  the  world.  He 
still  made  use  of  them  in  mimed  impersonation  and 
graphic  suggestion  remote  indeed  from  the  ends 
for  which  the  older  French  and  Italian  ballet- 
masters  designed  them. 

They  conceived  the  art  of  the  dance  as  self- 
contained,  self-sufficient,  absolute,  reward  enough 
in  its  own  agilities,  graces,  subtleties  for  those 
that  practiced  and  those  that  watched  and  ap- 
plauded it.  Obviously  it  asked  little  of  the  mind; 
it  gave  as  little  room  for  any  play  of  the  spirit. 
Yet  for  the  dancer  and  the  mime  of  these  later  and 
[219] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

newer  days  who  would  ply  his  intellect  and  set  free 
his  fancy  and  feeling  in  all  that  he  undertakes, 
this  old  virtuosity  provides  often  the  apt  and  ready 
means — a  shading  here,  a  happy  stroke  there,  a 
luminous  point  upon  an  implication  that  might 
otherwise  be  dark,  a  persuasive  suavity  that  ingrati- 
tates  and  kindly  disposes  the  spectator.  The  alert- 
ness, the  patience,  the  dexterity,  the  endless  quest 
for  exactitude  of  the  elder  virtuosity  have  their 
uses  in  the  new  freedoms.  In  itself  it  may  be  no 
more  than  a  relatively  paltry  goal;  yet  without  it 
the  dancer  and  the  mime  of  these  days  lacks  his 
tested  tools. 

Nijinsky  often  talked  in  his  day,  as  few  dancers 
can  talk,  about  the  art  of  the  dance.  Lucidly  and 
with  a  gentle  confidence,  he  was  ready  to  link  the 
present  with  the  future.  He  recalled  the  repertory 
of  the  Russian  Ballet  as  it  then  was:  on  the 
one  side  the  pieces  that  exemplify  the  dance, 
—"The  Sylphs,"  "The  Enchanted  Princess,"  "The 
Phantom  of  the  Rose,"  "Butterflies,"  "Camaval" 
— ballets  of  atmospheric  and  poetic  suggestion  as 
well  as  of  the  skill  that  they  exact:  on  the  other  side 
the  mimodramas — "Cleopatra,"  "Scheherazade," 
**Thamar,"  seeking  illusion  by  acting  that  should 
be  only  the  more  graphic  because  it  is  wordless 
[220] 


DANCERS 

and  using  the  dance  not  only  as  decoration,  but  also 
as  characterization  and  narrative.  It  was  pos- 
sible for  him,  for  Fokine,  for  the  ballet,  to  con- 
tinue to  multiply  either  species,  deriving  a  "Butter- 
flies" from  a  "Camaval,"  for  example,  making  the 
dance  serve  new  fancies,  transfiguring  as  in 
"Armida's  Pavilion"  that  upon  which  it  had  exer- 
cised itself  of  old.  Similarly  mimodrama  could 
go  on  with  mimodrama — of  agonized  passion,  of 
Oriental  scene.  But  the  outcome  would  be — ^lo 
make  a  kind  of  paradox — a  monotony  diversified 
within  itself,  content  with  pretty  terpsichorean  fan- 
tasias or  with  mimed  and  excited  action.  Stravin- 
sky's "Fire-Bird"  did  little  more  than  blend  these 
fantasias  of  the  dance  with  quasi-dramatic  fable  out 
of  old  folk-lore.  Even  "Petrushka"  widened  the 
field  only  by  the  setting  of  a  fantastic  and  ironic 
tale  within  the  busy  and  realistic  action  of  the 
booth  and  the  fair. 

Yet  in  "Petrushka,"  in  his  view,  was  the  germ  of 
the  idea  that  first  persuaded  and  finally  conquered 
him.  Stravinsky  and  Benois  bid  the  spectators  look 
into  the  half -human  puppet's  piteous  little  soul. 
He  is  more  interesting,  more  touching  for  what  he 
is  than  for  what  he  does.  The  interest  and  the 
illusion  of  the  fantasias  were  dynamic,  upspring- 
[221] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

ing  from  the  grace,  the  charm,  the  beauty  of  mo- 
tion. The  interest  and  the  illusion  of  the  mimo- 
dramas  sprang  from  visualized  and  intensified 
action.  But  the  appeal  of  Petrushka,  the  puppet, 
was,  to  a  degree,  in  what  he  half -humanly  was, 
in  his  reactions  to  his  fantastic  fortunes.  He 
touched  his  audience  by  what  it  felt  about  him 
rather  than  by  what  it  merely  saw  him  do.  Why 
not,  then,  go  forward  to  a  ballet  that  should  de- 
pend much  more  upon  this  static  suggestion,  a  bal- 
let that  should  not  be  full  of  dynamic  emphasis,  a 
ballet  almost — to  put  an  extreme  case — without 
movement? 

In  "The  Afternoon  of  a  Faun,"  Nijinsky  first 
worked  out  his  idea  of  a  ballet  that  should  be  in- 
trinsically static,  impersonal,  so  to  say;  of  spirit- 
ualized atmosphere  and  illusion,  of  reticent  means 
and  of  means  newly  devised  or  employed.  Studi- 
ous always  of  pictures  and  sculptures,  the  old 
Greek  bas-reliefs  suggested  the  simplicity,  the 
directness,  the  economy,  even  the  rigidity  of 
line  in  pose  and  gesture  that  he  sought.  From  the 
actors  on  the  stage  of  the  spoken  word,  when  to 
their  abilities,  they  add  intuition,  inspiration  and 
what  in  short  is  called  genius,  emanate,  though  they 
speak  not  and  stir  not,  the  sensations,  the  emotions, 
[222] 


DANCERS 

the  traits  of  the  personage  that  they  are  assuming 
in  the  circumstances  of  the  play.  May  not  a  dancer 
and  mime  of  the  speechless  theater  so  receive,  in- 
tensify and  transmit,  so  bear  to  his  audience  the 
sensations  and  the  illusions  implicit  in  Debussy's 
music  and  Mallarme's  verses?  May  not  he  and 
others  besides,  into  whom  he  has  infused  his  intent, 
weave  out  of  pose  and  gesture  and  graphic  impres- 
sion, from  within  outward,  an  atmosphere  like  that 
which  Debussy  weaves  in  tones? 

So  Nijinsky  designed  and  accomplished  his 
version  of  "The  Afternoon  of  a  Faun."  So  he  went 
forward  to  Debussy's  "Jeux,"  to  Stravinsky's 
"Sacre  de  Printemps,"  neither  of  which  has  been 
seen  in  America.  In  "Jeux,"  he  sought  to  sim- 
plify and  spiritualize  light  fancy  until  the  audi- 
ence should  forget  that  it  was  looking  upon  youth 
that  might  be  on  their  way  to  or  from  tennis,  yes- 
terday, to-day,  to-morrow,  should  feel  only  the  play 
of  ever-renewed  young  moods,  caprice,  pastime, 
and  coquetry.  He  pursued  a  distilled  illusion,  he 
used  as  distilled  and  concentrated  means.  So  far 
as  he  could  accomplish  his  end,  the  piece — half- 
mimed,  half -danced  and  sometimes  merely  a  still 
projection — characterized.  In  "Le  Sacre  de 
Printemps" — spring  rites  of  a  primitive  and  pagan 
[223] 


.EIGHTH   NOTES 

Russia — he  returned  to  static  suggestion,  to  rigid, 
sparing  but  always  cleariy  rhythmed  pose,  gesture, 
movement,  to  this  intensified  projection  by  subtler 
and  keener  means  than  action,  of  the  beliefs,  the 
emotions,  the  ceremonies  of  primitive  folk  and 
faith.  Already  he  had  persuaded  Stravinsky 
to  his  experiments  and  they  worked  upon  "Le 
Sacre"  in  a  common  courage  and  loyalty.  Then 
for  a  year  or  two  he  paused  for  the  nursing  of 
new  ideas,  for  the  shaping  of  new  designs,  for  the 
fresh  opportunity.  It  came  with  "Till  Eulen- 
spiegel,"  in  the  graphic  concentration  of  a  place,  a 
time,  a  folk,  their  moods  and  their  manners,  in 
hint  withal  at  social  philosophy.  The  stage  of 
the  mime  may  thus  match,  may  outdo,  Nijinsky 
believed,  the  austerer  stage  of  the  spoken  word. 

Who  shall  say  that  he  did  not  succeed?  For  in 
his  definition  of  Till,  he  surely  fulfilled  his 
own  faith  in  the  characterizing  arts  of  the  dancer 
and  the  mime.  In  the  prank  upon  the  bread- 
basket went  the  sportive  Till — yet  with  a  more 
serious  intent  or  two  underneath — and  the  lithe- 
ness,  the  swiftness  of  his  rhythmed  pillaging  had 
the  beauty  of  the  dance.  When  he  mocked  the 
pious  pretence  of  the  monks  this  Till  grimaced 
[224] 


DANCERS 

with  his  foot,  with  his  whole  body.  When  he  pre- 
tended to  woo  the  rich  and  high-placed  dames  he 
wove  the  arabesques  of  the  dance,  yet  in  and 
through  them  was  the  derisive  courtier.  When  he 
made  a  mock  of  pedantic  learning  he  put  a  kind 
of  counterpoint  into  his  miming. 

Then  came  the  Till,  all  the  mantles  of  disguise 
thrown  aside,  who  danced  in  the  long  swift  lines, 
the  great  arcs  about  the  square,  in  the  elation  of  his 
power  and  victory,  in  the  happiness  of  a  free  spirit. 
Out  of  the  face,  the  arms,  the  whole  being  of  this 
Till  spoke  the  jest  that  was  more  than  half  earnest 
when  the  rabble  lifted  him  to  deserved  kingship. 
The  miming  of  Till  before  the  inquisitors  was  more 
within  the  ordinary  scope  of  mimodrama  with  the 
twinges  and  twitches  of  dread  in  exact  accord  with 
the  checked  and  tremulous  leaps  of  Strauss's  music. 
Then,  resurrection  and  glorification  with  the  out- 
shining from  Till  of  that  inner  illumination  which 
Nijinsky  believed  the  mime  no  less  than  the  actor 
could  compass — the  triumph  of  an  idea  and  a  tem- 
perament in  perpetual  symbol,  the  "apotheosis"  of 
the  ancient  ballet  made  a  thing  of  simplicity, 
significance  and  beauty.  In  practice  no  less  than 
in  faith  Nijinsky  did  not  flag.  Newer  dancers 
now  carry  on  these  faiths  and  these  practices. 
[225] 


V.    Genee's  Cool  Charm 

Adeline  Genee  was  to  the  very  day  of  her  retire- 
ment the  dancer,  par  excellence,  for  cool  and  culti- 
vated spirits.  To  the  end  she  kept  her  hold  upon 
the  public  that  liked  her  devotion  to  the  classic 
ballet  and  that  was  ever  a  little  dubious  over  the 
newer  and  franker  dancing  of  Isadora  Duncan  with 
her  train  of  imitators,  and  of  the  passionate  and 
thrilling  Russians.  Miss  Duncan  and  her  pro- 
geny danced  in  a  fashion  of  their  own  that  has  wid- 
ened the  expressive  scope  and  vividness  of  the 
dance,  mated  it  to  new  rhythms  and  new  music, 
subdued  its  virtuosity  and  increased  its  humanity. 
When  the  Russians  danced,  it  was  with  the  strange 
and  exotic  savor,  the  mingling  of  simplicity  and  so- 
phistication, the  passion  and  the  mystery — to  us  of 
the  Western  World — ^that  are  in  most  of  the  applied 
arts  of  the  Slav.  Alone  among  the  dancers  of  the 
first  rank  that  we  in  America  have  known,  Genee 
perpetuated  the  traditions  of  the  classic  school — • 
of  the  dancing  that  descended  from  the  eighteenth 
century  into  the  nineteenth,  that  flowered  in  the 
[226] 


DANCERS 

golden  years  of  Taglioni  and  Ellsler,  Grisi  and 
Cerito;  fell  away  into  the  sterile  and  finical  vir- 
tuosity that  long  flourished  on  the  stages  of  Paris, 
Rome  and  Petrograd;  only  to  rise  reincarnated 
for  us  of  America  and  England  in  Genee. 

By  chance  or  design — ^much  more  probably  the 
latter — she  emphasized  this  descent  and  heightened 
this  similitude  by  her  choice  of  pieces.  In  one  she 
danced  and  mimed  as  La  Camargo,  the  illustrious 
dancer  of  the  Paris  of  Louis  XV,  who  widened 
the  technical  range  of  the  ballet  and  who,  beyond 
all  her  sisters  of  the  eighteenth  century,  clothed 
her  dancing  in  her  own  traits  and  spirit.  In 
another,  Genee  danced  in  the  ballet  of  the  nuns' 
ghostly  temptations  from  Meyerbeer's  opera, 
"Robert  the  Devil."  It  was  a  ballet  of  the  thirties 
and  the  forties,  a  "real  French  ballet"  in  white 
tulle  skirts  and  fleshings,  as  our  grandparents 
would  have  called  it.  In  such  ballets  did  the  danc- 
ers of  the  golden  age  move.  Between  whiles, 
too,  Genee  disported  herself,  with  her  own  adept 
faculty  as  a  comedienne,  in  light  interludes,  in 
fanciful  or  humorous  dances  of  character. 

For  those  that  know  and  care  for  the  classic  tech- 
nique of  the  dance  and  for  those  that  only  half  sus- 
pect, out  of  quickened  feeling,  its  exactions  and 
[227] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

felicities,  Genee's  dancing  in  the  ballet  from 
"Robert"  was  high,  rare  pleasure.  She  accom- 
plished in  it  nearly  every  possible  feat  of  virtuosity 
in  a  flawless  perfection  that  seemed  to  rise  with  the 
difficulty  of  the  achievement.  Her  light  bounds, 
her  graceful  swirls,  her  rhythmed  steps  about  the 
stage  seemed  aerial  and  bodiless.  Her  pirouettes 
were  little  rhapsodies  in  technique.  Her  poses 
flowed  into  beauty  and  grace  of  line  that  sug- 
gested no  eff'ort,  that  bore  not  a  trace  of  stiff'ness. 
Artifice  they  were,  but  spontaneous  and  beautiful 
artifice.  The  subtler  attributes  and  graces  of  the 
old  dancing  shone  in  her — in  the  varied  poise  of 
her  head  and  shoulders,  in  the  management  of  her 
hands,  in  the  keeping  of  her  body  in  flowing  or 
arrested  arabesque.  She  accomplished  all  these 
things  with  an  ease,  a  sureness,  an  elegance,  a 
completeness  that  were  style  in  itself  in  conscious 
but  unobtruded  perfection.  Then  entered  the  per- 
sonality of  the  dancer  to  glamour  this  dancing,  in 
the  narrow  sense  of  the  word,  with  beauty  and  with 
charm.  Meyerbeer's  ballet  in  spite  of  its  elaborate 
program  of  temptations  expresses  nothing  to  the 
imaginations  of  the  present  but  the  beauty  with 
which  the  dancer  may  clothe  it.  Dancing  in  it,  now- 
adays, is  "absolute"  dancing  existing  for  its  own 
[228] 


DANCERS 

sake  and  making  its  appeal  in  its  own  right  in  the 
fashion  of  "absolute"  music.  Since  there  is  no 
passion  or  mystery  in  the  music  or  the  imaginings 
behind,  it  was  at  one  with  Genee's  own  spirit.  She 
sought  the  "absolute"  and  abstract  quality  of  the 
dance — ^the  body  weaving  beautiful  patterns  upon 
the  air,  then  animating  and  illuminating  them  with 
the  glow  and  the  charm  of  the  spirit  behind.  Of 
such  disembodied  beauty  was  her  dancing  in 
"Robert." 

The  music  of  "La  Camargo"  was  adapted  from 
eighteenth  century  sources  by  Miss  Dora  Bright. 
The  ballet  was  set  on  the  stage  in  a  boudoir  wherein 
Boucher's  fat  and  rosy  nymphs  looked  down  from 
the  walls.  It  was  diversified  by  entrances  of 
Louis  XV  himself,  a  distressed  mother,  a  half- 
grateful  and  a  half -anxious  soldier.  It  bade  Genee 
mime  as  well  as  dance.  She  was  La  Camargo, 
momentarily  melancholy  and  introspective,  while 
over  this  disillusion  she  threw  the  wistful  charm  of 
face  and  motion  which  was  the  counterpart  of  mer- 
riment in  the  dancer's  temperament.  She  had  oc- 
casion also  to  make  La  Camargo  arch,  playful, 
merry,  even  with  the  great  king  who  came  to  see 
her  dance  and  who  was  fain  to  walk  a  smiling  ga- 
votte with  her.  As  it  happened,  too,  the  distressed 
[229] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

mother  and  the  anxious  soldier  were  no  other  than 
friends  and  companions  of  La  Camargo's  village 
youth,  and  so  Genee  could  bubble  with  sur- 
prised pleasure  at  sight  of  them  once  more  and 
play  at  being  a  peasant  girl  again. 

Genee  mimed  with  many  of  the  conventional 
signs  of  the  classic  pantomime;  but  she  softened 
and  refined  them  with  her  individual  charm,  made 
her  face  the  clear  mirror  of  what  they  would  re- 
flect, and  kept  them  flowing  with  an  elegant  and 
airy  lightness.  She  could  not  mime  deep  and 
passionate  moods,  but  she  could  fill  surfaces  with 
beautiful  light  and  shade.  She  danced,  too,  as  La 
Camargo,  in  the  full  flowing  skirt  and  the  high 
bodice  that  dancers  wore  in  those  days,  danced  in 
the  very  entrechats — the  crossings  of  the  feet  in 
air — that  Camargo  herself  invented,  and  in  many 
another  fashion  that  the  eighteenth  century  may  or 
may  not  have  known.  Over  this  dancing  she  wove 
the  wonted  beauty  and  charm  that  were  in  all  she 
did;  while  costume,  surroundings,  the  little  tale, 
and  the  pleasant  illusion  of  the  eighteenth  century 
touched  both  with  elegance,  with  fragrance. 


[230] 


V.    Isolated  Isadora 

The  charm  of  Isadora  Duncan's  dancing  in  her 
best  days  was  its  exquisite  innocence,  its  exquisite 
lightness  and  its  exquisite  plasticity.  Some  there 
were  who  called  it  the  dancing  of  the  future — 
which,  of  course,  was  pure  conjecture.  Her  ad- 
vertisements in  turn  called  her  dances  "a  revival 
of  Greek — or  was  it  classic? — art."  That  desig- 
nation was  no  less  conjectural.  If  the  archaeolo- 
gists may  be  trusted,  scanty  indeed  are  the  accounts 
of  Hellenic  dancing,  or  even  allusions  to  it,  that 
have  come  down  to  us. 

Whereas  Genee  idealized  the  conventions  of  the 
ballet.  Miss  Duncan  in  her  turn — or  Isadora  as 
Europe  still  prefers  to  call  her — had  invented  a 
method  of  dancing  that  was  and  is  all  her  own; 
that  gives  oftenest  the  impression  of  abstract  and 
remote  beauty;  and  that  depends  unusually  little, 
little  upon  the  personal  charm  of  the  dancer. 
Whether  Isadora  ever  studied  the  classical  tech- 
nique of  the  ballet  is  not  easy  to  learn.  It  was 
her  way  to  wrap  aU  her  beginnings  in  mystery. 
[231] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

At  the  least,  in  the  nineties,  when  she  was  one  of 
the  chorus  girls  of  Daly's  Theatre,  she  must  have 
learned  something  of  the  ways  of  ordinary  stage 
dancing.  Doubtless  those  beginnings  trained  her 
muscles  to  supple  obedience,  doubtless  they  gave 
her  something  of  the  skill  she  had  in  her  prime  to 
hide  all  mechanism;  and  most  surely  they  taught 
her  much  to  avoid.  There  was  not  a  trace  of  con- 
vention in  her  dancing.  She  had  plainly  gone  to 
other  models — ^to  Greek  and  Roman  marbles  and 
vases,  to  Roman  wall-paintings,  and  to  the  pictures 
of  the  more  primitive  Italian  painters.  As  plainly 
she  studied  the  rhythmic  movements  of  natural  ob- 
jects, of  children,  and  of  untutored  folk  in  unfet- 
tered dance.  Her  dancing  seemed  less  a  return 
to  the  conjectures  of  what  Greek  dancing  may  have 
been  than  a  return  to  nature  itself;  to  dancing  as 
beautiful,  rhythmic  and  expressive  motion  in  all 
its  purity  and  abstraction.  Out  of  her  own  imagi- 
nation, out  of  her  own  intuitions  and  aptitude,  she 
made  her  own  methods,  fashioned  her  own  ends 
and  set  her  own  standards.  The  suggestions  from 
without  she  wove  within. 

This  dancing  was  truly  all  her  own:  yet  as  truly 
it  was  little  dependent  on  her  own  personality. 
Certainly  she  lacked  physical  and  sensuous  beauty 
[232] 


DANCERS 

either  of  face  or  form.  She  gave  no  sense  of  indi- 
vidual distinction.  She  had  no  "troubling"  sem- 
blances, as  the  French  adjective  goes.  There  she 
was — a  woman  past  her  first  youth,  dark  of  hair 
and  eye, 'thin  of  feature,  slight  of  body,  neither 
short  nor  tall — in  fine,  without  physical  signifi- 
cance of  any  kind.  Yet  clearly  in  her  was  the 
spirit  that  subdues  all  things  to  itself.  She  was 
interesting,  she  was  unique,  not  for  what  she  was 
(which  was  half  the  secret  of  Genee's  charm)  but 
for  what  she  did.  Moreover,  in  her  dances,  all 
sense  of  the  dancer  herself  as  so  much  corporeal 
flesh  and  blood,  vanished.  She  had  become 
beautiful  and  expressive  and  disembodied  motion. 
The  nearest  and  clearest  analogy  is  that  of  the 
dancing  figures  with  which  the  Romans  adorned 
their  walls.  Isadora  seemed  as  one  of  these  that 
some  magic  had  set  free  and  that  danced  upon  the 
air.  She  was  as  bodiless  as  they;  she  moved  with 
the  same  infinite  lightness;  she  repeated  them  in 
endless  variations  of  their  beauty.  She  was  no 
more  tangible  than  they  and  she  was  quite  as  lovely. 
The  painters  and  the  sculptors  of  Greece  and  Rome 
seized  their  dancers  in  a  moment  of  arrested  mo- 
tion, because  they  could  do  no  more  within  their 
arts.  Isadora  seemed  to  set  that  motion  free. 
[233] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

Miss  Duncan's  dancing  was  graphic  of  beautiful, 
sensitive  and  idealized  movement.  It  was  graphic 
no  less  of  idealized,  abstract  moods  and  emotions. 
It  was  loveliest  of  all,  for  example,  when  it  would 
express  awakening,  stirring,  mounting  joy,  when 
it  would  attain  to  a  pure  and  idealized  elation.  It 
was  graphic,  in  turn,  in  its  expression  of  innocence; 
never  was  dancing  less  sensual.  It  was  graphic, 
too,  of  moods  of  wistful  longing  and  wistful  ten- 
derness. It  had  even  a  passion  of  its  own,  a  clear 
soft  passion  that  sought  its  own  ideal  of  beautiful 
disclosure.  But  it  was  not  passionate  dancing  in 
the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample. Miss  Duncan's  dances  to  music  out  of 
Gluck's  "Orpheus."  The  suggestion  of  the  blessed 
spirits  of  the  Elysian  Fields  lay  exactly  within  the 
range  and  quality  of  her  artistry  and  imagination. 
Then  indeed  was  she  a  figure  of  ideal  beauty,  of 
truly  poetic  illusion,  of  exquisite  purity  of  motion 
and  mood.  She  had  also  to  suggest  Orpheus,  dis- 
traught at  the  loss  of  Eurydice,  torn  alike  with  ap- 
prehension and  anticipation  as  he  makes  his  way 
to  the  underworld.  She  did  indeed  imply  all 
this,  but  remotely,  statuesquely,  a  little  coldly. 
The  play  of  body  and  face  and  arms  lacked  the 
intensity  that  we  modems  almost  unconsciously 
[234] 


DANCERS 

associate  with  such  passionate  grief.  No  one 
knows,  no  one  cares  whether  the  miming  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  suggested  such  emotions  reti- 
cently— as  reticently  as  did  Miss»Duncan — whether 
they  made  them  less,  and  not  more,  human.  (Cer- 
tainly the  account  of  the  miming  in  Anatole 
France's  novel  of  pagan  Alexandria  implies  no 
such  reticence.)  Rather  the  essential  matter  is 
that  a  dancer  here  and  now  should  implant  Or- 
pheus's  grief  vividly  in  us  who  watch  her.  At 
such  moments  Miss  Duncan's  lack  of  passion  or 
suppression  of  passion,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
word,  partially  defeated  her.  Recall  her  pro- 
grams and  they  avoided  almost  always  the  ex- 
pression of  vehement  and  consuming  passion. 
Joyous  and  virginal,  she  illuded  the  spectator.  Be- 
fore her,  doomed  and  woe-stricken,  he  doubted. 

In  a  word.  Miss  Duncan  was  the  dancer  rather 
than  the  mime.  The  mime,  as  ancient  dancing  and 
even  modem  ballet  employs  the  word,  dances  to 
suggest  specific  emotions,  a  specific  mood,  even  a 
specific  character.  Miss  Allan's  much  debated 
"Vision  of  Salome"  was  not  dancing  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  term,  but  miming.  She  sought  to 
suggest,  she  did  suggest,  the  Princess  of  Judaea  and 
the  particular  episode  of  the  execution  of  the  Bap- 
[235] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

tist.  So  Tha'is  in  the  episode  that  Anatole  France 
describes  imparts  the  particular  personage  of 
Greek  and  Trojan  legend.  When  Miss  Duncan 
mimed — in  the  tale  of  Pan  and  Echo,  for  instance, 
or  the  fable  of  Narcissus,  or  the  passion  of  Orpheus 
— it  was  beautiful  miming  in  loveliness  of  pose,  in 
grace  of  movement,  in  exquisiteness  of  sugges- 
tion. It  visualized;  but  it  visualized  a  little 
tamely,  a  little  in  flat  tints.  The  spectator  looked 
upon  a  picture  of  Narcissus,  a  vision  of  Pan  and 
Echo,  as  Botticelli  or  some  other  primitive  Italian 
painter  might  have  imagined  them.  There  was 
little  sense  of  the  emotions  of  the  youth  or  the 
nymphs.  They  lacked  intensity.  They  were  not 
characterized  but  pictured.  The  reason  was  not 
far  to  seek.  Luminous  as  the  motions  of  Miss 
Duncan's  dancing  could  be;  though  she  could  make 
her  arms  as  beautiful  and  significant  as  a  line  of 
poetry,  her  face  had  scant  range  of  vivid  expres- 
sion. The  spectator  could  read  little  there  but 
Isadora's  absorption  in  her  task,  Isadora's  smiling 
joy  of  it,  or  at  most  some  generalized  emotion. 
Now  one  may  not  mime  without  very  clear  and 
adroit  play  of  feature,  and  it  was  on  this  side  of 
pantomime  that  Miss  Duncan  had  obvious  limita- 
tions. 

[236] 


DANCERS 

Miss  Duncan's  dancing,  because  it  was  so  self- 
contained,  so  abstract,  was  more  akin  to  music 
than  to  any  other  of  the  arts.  She  liked  to  dance 
to  a  symphony  of  Beethoven  or  to  fragments  of 
opera  by  Gluck,  or  to  sober  airs  of  Rameau  and 
other  composers  of  the  classic  eighteenth  century. 
Yet  the  sensations  the  spectator  received  from  her 
dances  were  often  curiously  like  those  that  spring 
from  a  symphony  of  Mozart.  The  long,  flowing 
line  of  the  music  and  the  dance,  ever  springing  and 
curving  out  of  itself,  were  as  one.  The  endless  un- 
dulation of  Miss  Duncan's  dancing  was  as  the  end- 
less imdulation  of  Mozart's  music.  Each  had  its 
points  of  repose  when  the  dance  or  the  music 
seemed  to  crystallize  for  the  instant  and  then  flow 
onward  again.  Each  had  its  light,  clear  beauty, 
each  its  grace  and  ornament.  Each,  too,  sought 
felicity  of  design,  economy  of  means.  Miss  Dun- 
can's dancing  was  only  the  development  and  the 
variation  of  certain  motions  and  certain  poses;  she 
worked  from  them,  she  modulated  them,  she  indi- 
vidualized them  as  a  mistress  of  the  ballet  works 
and  imagines  and  invents  from  the  classic  "posi- 
tions." Mozart  in  like  spirit  was  economical,  in- 
ventive, imaginative  with  his  music.  Out  of  little 
he  wove  much — and  to  beauty.  Again,  there  was 
[237] 


EIGHTH   NOTES 

often  a  suggestion  of  joy  in  Miss  Duncan's  dances 
that  was  strangely  like  that  of  Mozart's  music,  and 
that  similarly  beguiled  and  stirred  those  who  saw 
or  heard.  Each  had  the  same  chastity  of  form, 
mood  and  impression.  On  occasion  Miss  Duncan 
believed  she  danced  to  Beethoven.  Almost  always 
she  was  dancing  to  Mozart. 


THE  END 


[238] 


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